


What Your Dad Doesn’t Know

by MudDog



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alpha Jackson, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dubious Consent, F/M, I can't believe I wrote an mpreg fic, Lots of Secrets, M/M, Mark is a mess, Mpreg, Omega Mark, Secrets, how does one tag?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-05-13 14:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MudDog/pseuds/MudDog
Summary: High school sex ed never seems to impart the information you really need. Like, they should definitely teach people how to hide an unplanned pregnancy. Then maybe Mark wouldn’t be here: twenty-two, woefully unprepared, and scrambling to cover up what might be the greatest scandal in the history of K-pop.





	1. Three Sibilants for Success: Suppressants, Sobriety, and Celibacy

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: The primary subject of this fic is a dubiously consensual sexual situation and its ramifications. If you think that may bother you, please do not read on; this is not going to be the fic for you.
> 
> OTHER NOTES: Please read the warning. If you have already done so and decided to read this fic anyway, yay! I am still slightly horrified that I wrote an Mpreg fic, but hopefully I'll get over that in a month or so. Also, please give me feedback! This fic is far from finished, so whatever you say will impact how I write future chapters. That's all I can think to say at the moment. Have a lovely day!

It’s Yugyeom who first notices something’s wrong. He freezes with a bagel halfway to his mouth and stares. Mark is slumped against the island counter in the dorm’s common area, and Yugyeom is standing on the other side, eating his breakfast. Or he was. Now he’s staring at Mark with the sort of frightening intensity that draws Mark’s eyes upwards like a magnet.

“Are you okay, hyung?” Yugyeom asks once he’s established eye contact.

“Uh-huh,” says Mark.

“You sure? You’ve been staring at my throat for a solid minute.”

“Ah,” says Mark. He didn’t realize he was doing that, but now that he thinks about it, he definitely was. He’s been a little spaced out. Not that that’s new.

He looks back at Yugyeom’s throat, squinting as he tries to sort out his thoughts. There is something about the shape of Yugyeom’s Adam’s apple that’s more interesting than usual. Did he lose weight?

“Mark?” Yugyeom sets his bagel down on the counter, squirming a bit.

“Sorry,” says Mark. He tears his eyes away and tries to focus on the wood grain of the counter top.

Chewing noises fill Mark's ears as Yugyeom resumes eating his bagel, but it’s slow, and a moment later Yugyeom says, “You look kind of pink, hyung. Like, in a sick way. Are you sure you’re not sick?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, shit,” says Yugyeom, “do you think…”

He doesn’t continue, and the silence eventually forces Mark’s gaze up again. The bagel hovers forgotten a few inches from Yugyeom’s mouth, which he hasn’t closed, and his eyebrows cut deep wrinkles into his forehead. He looks almost middle-aged, and it can’t be good for his skin.

“What?” Mark prompts.

Yugyeom’s forehead keeps its creases, and he walks his fingers around the edge of the bagel, spinning it in tiny, jerky movements. “Do you think it could be… you know.”

Mark stares at him blankly for a couple seconds, watching Yugyeom spin the bagel with increasing speed and with increasingly red cheeks. Then it clicks. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, no, that could be it.”

Yugyeom continues to spin the bagel.

“That’s probably it,” Mark says.

He’d forgotten that he wasn’t on suppressants anymore. It’s been about six years since his last heat, and he recognizes the signs now more through textbook knowledge than experience—disorientation, slight headache, uncomfortable warmth jumping about under his skin, and, of course, the fact that he was staring at Yugyeom’s throat. Yes, now that he thinks it through, he’s definitely going into heat. It will be the third time in his life, the first since high school. He’s been on suppressants since he was sixteen, but he switched to a birth-control-suppressant-combo drug after coming to Korea and, for whatever reason, his body decided it had had enough of that about five months back (there was a weird rash that Mark doesn’t want to think about). His doctor said he’d have to switch to a different drug, but they had to wait until the last shot wore off first. And how would they know when it wore off? Because Mark’s body, finally permitted to do what it had indubitably been preparing for for the past half-decade, would celebrate its newfound freedom with a heat.

Evidently, it has decided the time is ripe.

Yugyeom clears his throat, and Mark realizes he's staring again. Yugyeom’s neck looks really good today; it isn’t Mark’s fault.

“Do you wanna, like, go to your room? Is that what you do?”

“I could do that,” Mark agrees slowly. His brain feels a bit addled, but he slides off the stool to follow Yugyeom’s advice.

He makes it two steps before his stomach tries to jump out his throat, and it must shake off the last of his brain’s anchoring in the process because suddenly his world tilts dramatically to the left.

“Wah,” is the intelligent noise that escapes Mark’s mouth before impact knocks all the air out of his lungs.

It takes him a moment to realize that he hasn’t hit the floorboards. Something much softer than the thirty-year-old wood keeps him partially aloft, and, when he finally manages to focus his eyes and squint through the bright glare of the ceiling light, he recognizes that something as Yugyeom. Specifically, Yugyeom’s arms.

The whole thing lasts only a half-second or so, and then Yugyeom scoops him off the floor entirely. Mark wants to protest—he is not a stuffed animal or a throw pillow; he should not just be picked up—but then his head flops against Yugyeom’s shirt and he smells the faint alpha scent ingrained in the cotton. It’s as if the dimming switch on his rational thought process suddenly flips entirely. His muscles feel loose, heavy. His internal temperature ticks up like a toaster oven, and his mind diffuses out of his skull, lost to the air. _Osmosis_ , he thinks vaguely, and then worries that that isn’t right.

“You’re heavier than BamBam,” Yugyeom mutters.

“Mmm,” Mark agrees happily. They are moving forward, and the slow rocking sensation is a pleasant one now, though a moment ago he might have found it nauseating.

“It’s not a good thing, hyung. I don’t know if I can open the door to your room like this.”

“Mmm,” Mark agrees.

“Can you not understand Korean anymore?”

Mark pushes his face closer to Yugyeom’s shirt. “Mmm.”

“Awesome,” grumbles Yugyeom. “How is this a survival instinct? You are literally useless right now.”

Mark hums agreement to this, too, and then decides to stop paying attention to the things Yugyeom says. The important thing is how he smells. It’s not as strong as Mark would like— _suppressants_ , a functional piece of his brain supplies—but it still smells very nice. Something like bread and laundry. Safe.

The impression of safety persists when Yugyeom plops Mark down on his bed. The mattress is sufficiently squishy, and the covers are soft. Mark hums in contentment, but it shifts abruptly to a whine as Yugyeom turns and starts walking away, taking the bread smell with him.

“Don’t freak out,” Yugyeom commands, voice a bit cross. “I’m just gonna go find BamBam.”

“Stay,” Mark manages.

“I can’t. BamBam will stay. I have to leave to find him. Do you get it?”

Mark gets it; he just doesn’t like it. BamBam’s a beta, which is indubitably why Yugyeom is getting him, but it won’t be the same. No more bread smell.

A shiver skitters down Mark’s arms as the door shuts, leaving him alone in the room. It only takes a minute before the heat trapped under his skin starts to make him sweat. It’s too hot. Too much. It burns a hole in his gut and leaves the edges aching. He tries to readjust his position on the bed, find some way to lie that doesn’t make him want to puke, but every movement only produces new waves of throbbing. There’s something missing inside him. There’s something wrong.

The sense of safety associated with Yugyeom’s bread smell evaporates, replaced by the dark and creeping certainty that no one will come. They’re going to leave Mark here… all alone… forever. No one wants to handle omegas when they’ve gone heat-stupid. No one wants to spend half a week tending to him when he won’t even be able to get to the bathroom by himself.

It seems like hours before the door opens. It sends a cool draft into the room, which is blissfully refreshing for a half-second before the heat Mark’s producing sizzles it away. BamBam follows, shutting the door behind him.

“Hey,” BamBam says, striding over to settle on the edge of the bed. He crosses his legs, places his hands one atop the other, and peers down at Mark. “You look pretty pathetic, you know.”

Mark elects not to respond.

“At least you don’t smell much yet,” BamBam goes on, patting Mark’s leg consolingly. “Jaebum decided we’re going to spend the next couple days camping out at the studio so we don’t disturb you, but Youngjae, Jinyoung, or I will be here whenever we don’t have schedules.”

Mark rolls his head to stare at Youngjae’s bed on the other side of the room. The duvet has been pulled up to cover the mattress, but it hasn’t been straightened or smoothed out. Youngjae has some unframed photos taped to the wall above his pillow, mostly family, but there are a couple of friends and pets. His clothes, if not in the closet, sit in folded piles on the carpet. It’s all half order, half mess, and Mark decides that Youngjae is a good roommate. If he were here, he would be more sympathetic than BamBam.

“Do you feel like shit yet?” BamBam asks.

Mark considers this. He feels marginally better since BamBam’s arrival, no longer terrified that they’ve abandoned him, but his body is still put out that Yugyeom left. The ache in his gut throbs a couple times to remind him it’s there, and his pores pump out more sweat. The nausea simmers high in his abdomen, occasionally voyaging partway up his throat before subsiding again.

“Yes,” Mark decides. “I want Yugyeom back.”

BamBam sticks out his lower lip. “Hyung,” he complains, “don’t hurt my feelings. You know none of the alphas can come in.”

“Alpha,” Mark echoes.

“Yugyeom was right,” BamBam pouts. “You’re useless.”

“Alpha,” says Mark.

BamBam pats his leg again, harder than before. “This is going to be a long three days.”

 

He is right. Mark spends the first two in a feverish haze. His body has betrayed him. All it does is hurt. When the third day dawns, the symptoms show no sign of letting up. His vocabulary has been reduced to two words—“water” and “alpha”—and he’s pretty sure Jinyoung will kill him if he says either again. BamBam might not kill him, but he’ll sigh very loudly. He’s been doing a lot of sighing lately. Youngjae, as predicted, is the best beta.

Right now, though, there isn’t any beta. It’s late. Mark knows because the light sneaking around the shade that covers the small window over Youngjae’s bed is the dim, orange sort produced by the street lights. In other parts of the city, they’ve been upgraded to white fluorescents, but here the bulbs are incandescent still. The lumpy lines of orange light painted across Youngjae’s duvet, the floor, and the wall, are Mark’s only company. Except for Jackson, who Mark vaguely recalls has been off filming some reality show all week, the members are cooped up in the dance studio. The new choreography is apparently a bitch. At least, that’s what BamBam says, and, since BamBam is a better dancer than Mark, this bodes ill for his return. Mark hasn’t worried about it too much yet; he’s currently preoccupied with how his body feels like it's simultaneously incinerating and imploding. He wants water. He wants the covers off, and then immediately he wants them back on. He still wants water. He really, really wants an alpha.

The telltale squeak of the dorm’s door silences his thoughts. He stops squirming to listen, but he can’t control the hot shivers that course up and down his limbs and spine, nor can he silence the overwhelming wham, wham, wham of his heartbeat. Still, he hears the footsteps crossing the hardwood floor of the common area. They’re heavy and uneven, not like any footsteps Mark recognizes.

Mark’s heart flails. It feels like a fish out of water—flop, flop, flop. No one should be in the dorm. Mark’s breathing comes fast and shallow, and his head starts to feel too light, empty. The footsteps are still approaching, ever louder, and faster now than they were.

Mark is pretty sure he’s about to pass out when he smells it. Juniper. Something like warm rocks. And something sharper. Alpha. It’s familiar, too, though Mark can’t place it until the door to his room rattles and opens and his eyes manage to focus through the darkness.

One of the orange stripes from the street lamps cuts across the intruder’s face, illuminating one eye and a swathe of nose and cheek. Mark recognizes the pattern of the shadows, and his muscles go lax and heavy like when Yugyeom was carrying him three days ago.

It’s Jackson.

“Alpha,” Mark says.

Jackson’s face disappears from the light. A second later, there’s a thud.

“Shit, ow,” says Jackson. His voice is kind of loud.

“Jackson?”

“Hey,” Jackson says. The mattress dips and wobbles, and the juniper smell gets stronger. The sharp smell gets stronger, too, but Mark ignores it.

A slightly damp hand drops onto Mark’s neck, and then Jackson’s face follows it. Mark can barely see, but he can feel the cool tip of Jackson’s nose pushed into his throat. His pulse pushes back against it, and it steadies him.

“You smell really fucking good,” Jackson mumbles.

“You too,” Mark agrees, tipping his head to expose more of his neck. Jackson doesn’t immediately do anything with it, though, and an unpleasant, burning sensation creeps up from Mark’s chest. He feels less panicked now that Jackson’s here, but he doesn’t feel anything close to good. His body has been throwing a tantrum for days, and, now that it has all the ingredients to get what it wants, it’s yelling with renewed fervor. _Bake—the—cake! Bake—the—cake!_

Mark’s never been much of a cook, but he paws at Jackson’s arm and tips his head back further, and Jackson seems to get the message. The hand that was on Mark’s neck trails down to the collar of his t-shirt and tugs it lower. It then proceeds to inch along Mark’s collarbone and out to his shoulder before sliding back.

“You really smell good,” Jackson says, as if Mark didn’t believe him the first time. His nose is still pressed firmly against Mark’s throat, and then suddenly his tongue is too. It isn’t much warmer than Mark’s skin, but the moistness is nice, and the suction that soon follows is better.

Jackson pulls back an inch. He keeps rubbing Mark’s collarbone, but his nose is no longer touching Mark’s neck. “Really fantastic,” he says.

Mark wants him to shut up and get on with it, but he’s out of words.

“Incredible,” Jackson says. “Better than bulgogi. Even good bulgogi.”

Jackson dips his head back down and licks Mark’s neck, and Mark worries that this has become a food thing. He paws at Jackson’s arm again.

“Clothes,” Jackson nods, banging his chin into Mark’s other collarbone. “Why do we wear clothes? Shouldn’t everyone be naked? The world would be a better place. I should be naked. You should definitely be naked.”

Mark lifts his arms, his generous contribution to the shirt-removal effort. Jackson takes care of the rest.

“This is a good idea, right?” Jackson asks.

Mark agrees. It is a stupendous, very excellent idea.

“I thought so,” Jackson says.

It’s not the last thing he says, but it’s the last thing Mark bothers to hear.

 

When Mark wakes up, the heat is gone, and he feels gross and sticky and a little bit cold. For the first time since Tuesday, there’s no fog clouding his brain, and this is as much a curse as a blessing because he remembers in scalding detail what happened last night. In hindsight, it is both mortifying and stupid. Very stupid. The reawakened, semi-intelligent portion of Mark’s brain reminds him why it was possibly the worst decision he has ever made…

  1. They didn’t use a condom.
  2. It was Jackson.
  3. Now that Mark’s brain isn’t a pile of trash, he recognizes the sharp smell on Jackson as alcohol. Lots of it.
  4. Mark definitely has hickies on his neck.
  5. Now that Mark’s brain isn’t a pile of trash, he remembers that Jackson has a girlfriend.
  6. Either Youngjae or Jinyoung or BamBam is going to come back from the dance studio soon if they haven’t already, and then shit will really hit the fan.



Mark stops himself before he gets to seven. He needs to handle some of the first six first. Like… where even is Jackson?

The answer to this question becomes apparent three seconds later when Mark peers over the side of his bed and finds that Jackson is on the floor, tangled up in Mark’s duvet. This also explains why Mark is cold.

Mark holds his breath, reaches down, and pokes Jackson’s bicep.

Jackson doesn’t move.

Scooting to the edge of his bed and extending his legs, Mark steps carefully over Jackson. He proceeds to toe around the floor for clothing, throwing on the first things he finds, and then peeks out into the hallway. It’s dark and he doesn’t hear anything, which he’ll optimistically assume means that no one’s back yet.

He tiptoes back towards his bed and stares down at Jackson, considering his options. In the interests of preserving Mark’s dignity and group harmony and Jackson’s relationship with his girlfriend, it’s best if nobody finds out about this, which means Jackson needs to go. The question is how to get him gone. Mark could wake him up, but that would probably result in lots of awkwardness. Ultimately, awkwardness is probably inevitable, but Mark would really like to delay it.

He prods Jackson with his toe.

Jackson remains dead to the world.

This is good. Inching towards Jackson’s head, Mark bends down to snake his arms under Jackson’s armpits, which are sticky and gross. They stink, too, and, unfortunately, this drags up a memory from the previous night: telling Jackson that he smelled good.

Jesus, Mark should really just give up and go drown himself in the kitchen sink. This whole thing is going to be a shit show.

With his wavering resolution, Mark begins the painful process of hauling Jackson out first from under Mark’s duvet, across the carpet out of Mark’s room, and then down the hallway to Jackson’s own room. He has to stop twice; his back and shoulders die at least three times; and Jackson makes a total of five “mlah” noises that send Mark’s intestines jumping up to strangle his heart. But Jackson stays asleep—or unconscious—for the entirety of the trip.

When Mark finally deposits him next to Jackson's own bed, he has to take a short breather. He lies back on Jinyoung’s mattress and stares at the ceiling. There’s a glow-in-the-dark-star smiley face looking back at him, indubitably Jackson’s doing. Its grin is a bit crooked, almost manic, and Mark finds it off putting to the point that he can’t just keep lying there. Rolling off the bed, he finds himself staring at Jackson again. He’s slumped awkwardly on the floor, and he’s also very much naked. Mark didn’t consider how this might be a problem before. Stumbling over, he leans across Jackson to drag the duvet off his bed, and then pokes it around until it’s sort of piled on top of Jackson. Stepping back to examine his work, he decides that, though far be it from perfect, it’s good enough.

One more trip between rooms is enough to transport the last of Jackson’s discarded belongings—pants, underwear, undershirt, and jacket—to their proper location, that being the pile where Jackson lumps the rest of his used clothes, and then Mark goes to shower.

It’s in the shower that he finally lets himself freak out.

He slept with Jackson.

He slept with Jackson while he was in heat.

He slept with Jackson while he was in heat and Jackson was drunk.

He slept with Jackson while he was in heat and Jackson was drunk, and they didn’t use a condom, and Jackson has a girlfriend, and Mark could be pregnant now or have any of a hundred STDs, and Jackson might never want to talk to him again, and Jackson and his girlfriend might break up, and Jaebum might kill one or both of them for fucking up team chemistry, and then who would Youngjae room with, and who would take over Mark’s rap parts, and what would they tell his parents?

The water feels too hot, like each drop is burning his skin off, and Mark realizes that he’s breathing how rabbits breathe—exhaling almost before he’s inhaled. The steam clogs his lungs, and he is seriously going to pass out if he doesn’t find his chill. He leans back into the tile and focuses on the cold, slimy sensation. The air is still too warm and too wet, but he forces his diaphragm to pull more of it in. Then hold. Exhale. Repeat. Stay chill. Mark can be chill.

The fuzziness recedes, and the drops hitting his chest no longer scald him, though they’re still too hot. He can think this through. He has a decently functional brain, and it is going to help him. He takes another breath of steam and forces himself to work out a plan.

Step one is to act normal. Since this chiefly involves being horribly embarrassed about how he’s been acting for the past three days, it should be easy; Mark is mortified. The harder part is going to be pretending that his heat petered out normally with absolutely zero alpha involvement. None. Zilch. And Jackson? Who’s Jackson? Mark didn’t even notice him come in last night.

Step two, once he’s successfully deceived the rest of Got7, is to get tested. He’ll have to look up how long it takes before pregnancy tests produce reliable results because he definitely doesn’t want to go through the process more than once, and then he’ll have to sneak out to some Omega Health Clinic. Come to think of it, he’ll have to look up addresses for those, too, because he’s never gone before.

Step three is to straighten out his story with Jackson. Presumably this will be a very short discussion in which they agree to never mention last night again and carry on with business as usual. Things will be awkward, but, in the interests of avoiding panic, Mark will optimistically assume that this awkwardness will fade with time.

Step four is highly dependent on the results of step two. In one scenario, Mark will thank his lucky stars (or his own infertility) and proceed with life as previously, vaguely planned. In the other scenario, Mark’s world will fly off the deep end.

But he’s not going to worry about that yet. Step four is far away. It is step one time now.

Mark washes off the last remnants of soap, twists off the water, and steps into the cooler, drier air outside the shower. He checks himself over in the mirror as he towels dry, noting the three purple splotches on his neck. They are large and glaringly obvious: a trio of big, bruised eyes staring back at Mark accusingly. Thank god BamBam keeps BB Cream in the cabinet.

With all the evidence of his misdeeds washed away or covered up, Mark ventures out in search of his phone. He hasn’t seen it since his heat started, and he’s not sure where it ended up. The search takes him through all his own messy piles of belongings, all around the common area, through Youngjae’s pseudo-organized piles, into Yugyeom and BamBam’s room, and finally into Jaebum’s room, where he eventually unearths it from a stack of audio magazines.

It has three percent battery, and Mark just manages to send a text to Jinyoung informing him that it’s safe for everybody to return to the dorm before the screen flips to black.

He pauses a moment to note the unusual number of produce watercolors on Jaebum’s wall, then steals Jaebum’s charger, heads back to his room, and climbs under his covers. It’s unsettling to consider what happened in the same spot just hours before, but Mark is good at not considering what he doesn’t want to, and he really doesn’t want to consider things right now. What he wants to do is sleep and put off all his problems until tomorrow. So that’s what he does.


	2. Ignorance is Bliss... Sort of

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already had most of this chapter written, so I got it up very fast. Yay! Unfortunately, I do not predict that I'll be able to say the same for future chapters... I'm usually a pretty sloth-like writer.

Jackson enters the waking world in a stumbling, winding way that leaves him a bit nauseous and a lot fuzzy-brained. He doesn’t want to be awake. Not at all. But his bladder informs him that sleep isn’t going to happen until he hits the toilet, and the feeling of general grossness crawling over his skin insists that he should really shower while he’s at it.

Resigned, Jackson beats his way out from under his duvet and then uses the side of his bed to prop himself upright. A distant voice drifting up from the back of his head points out that he probably should have been on top of the bed, not next to it, but Jackson shrugs it off. What’s done is done. He also probably shouldn’t be naked, come to think of it, but—once again—what’s done is done. It will make showering easier.

Aware of the dangers light presents to his fragile eyes, Jackson stumbles blindly around the room until his hip collides with the doorknob, and then he ventures out into the hallway, muttering curses and keeping one hand on the wall all the way to the bathroom.

He feels marginally better after he’s peed and showered, but his head is still riding some sort of not-fun rollercoaster, and sleep sounds like the best invention since tweezers, so Jackson follows his same wobbling course back to his room and lies down on the floor, tugging the duvet over himself. He’s out within seconds.

When he surfaces again, it’s to the sound of voices. They echo through the door, pushing painfully against Jackson’s eardrums and hammering on his tender brain. He is not at all ready to face the day, but the day has come to face him, and Jackson’s going to have to deal with it. He kicks the cover off and crawls across his floor to find clothes.

Once they have been located and fastened around his body in sufficiently appropriate ways, Jackson ventures out of his room and follows the hallway to the source of the noise, which is the common area.

The rest of the group is there, clumped loosely around the island counter, some on stools and some standing. They all look much too awake for the present hour.

“Oh hey, Jackson!” says Youngjae, causing everyone else to turn and look. “When did you get back?”

Jackson wobbles over to them and tries to appear less hungover than he feels. “Sometime last night,” he says. “I don’t remember. I think I drank twice my weight in soju.”

Jaebum snorts. “I take it you’re done filming.” As he speaks, he deftly maneuvers his fork beneath Yugyeom’s to lift the last piece of watermelon off the serving plate.

“Yeah. Me and the cast went to some new club in Hongdae. Yopo’s? Yapa’s? It was awesome. I slayed the dance floor.”

Jinyoung lifts a dark eyebrow. “Right. Mark, did you notice him come in?”

Mark, who is slumped at the end of the counter looking a bit wan, shakes his head. “I was pretty out of it until early morning.” His eyes dart towards Jackson as if judging his reaction, and Jackson gets the uncomfortable impression that Mark is waiting for something.

“ _I_ was so out of it that I fell asleep on my floor,” he says. “I woke up naked, but, you know, I apparently had the sense to take the cover with me, so I’m giving myself a six out of ten.”

This apparently wasn’t what Mark was waiting for because he stares, facial muscles seemingly paralyzed. Jackson isn’t sure why he feels like he’s done something wrong, but he shifts his feet a bit, suddenly restless.

 “Mark?” Yugyeom prods. “Are you sure your heat’s over?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re kind of staring at Jackson.”

Mark’s eyes flick away immediately. “It’s over,” he says. “Totally over. I’m good.”

Now everyone’s looking at Mark. Except for Jaebum, who’s chewing the piece of watermelon he stole from Yugyeom. “Good,” he says through the watermelon. “That means you can come to dance practice.”

“Can I stay here in his place?” Youngjae asks.

Jaebum doesn’t bother to acknowledge this. “The van will be here in twenty minutes.”

“What’s wrong with the dance?” Jackson asks.

“New choreographer,” says BamBam. “Han Minsoo. I think he’s trying to do the tough guy thing. Start strong so we won’t give him shit later. It sucks.”         

“He’s a good choreographer,” Jaebum asserts.

“You don’t like him either, hyung,” Yugyeom mumbles, peering at Jaebum out of the corners of his eyes as Jaebum swallows the watermelon.

“That’s not true,” says Jaebum.

“Much as I want in on this drama, I need to brush my teeth,” says Jackson. “Fill me in later.” It really does pain him to walk away with so much steaming angst on the table, but, if they only have twenty minutes, Jackson needs to get himself sorted. He could probably kill somebody with his breath right now.

In what seems like no time (but is ostensibly twenty minutes), they’re piling into the van to head to the dance studio. Jackson and Jinyoung are the last two to get in. Jaebum takes the front seat, and they always force the maknae line into the very back, so Mark, Jinyoung and Jackson get the middle row.

Jinyoung holds open the door and smiles. “After you.”

“Why do I get the middle?” Jackson complains, even as he climbs in and scoots across the seat towards Mark, who has taken the window.

Jinyoung climbs in after and shuts the door. “Because you’re the shortest,” he says.

Jackson is about to protest that this has nothing to do with anything when he is distracted by movement to his left. Mark is inching away, pressing himself against the window and door so that he and Jackson aren’t touching at all. Jackson turns towards him instead.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “I don’t smell bad, do I? I swear I showered!”

“What,” says Mark, glancing back for a split second before looking out the window. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Yes, you are,” Jackson insists. “You’re scooting away from me. Aren’t we friends?”

Mark jabs him in the thigh. “There. Friendship.”

“Stop bothering Mark,” Jaebum snaps from the front seat. He hasn’t even turned around, and, when Jackson peers up at the rearview mirror, he can see that Jaebum is looking down at his phone.

“I wasn’t,” Jackson protests.

“You were,” says Jinyoung.

Jackson turns to give him an incredulous look but finds that Jinyoung’s eyes are closed, head tipped back, and he’s smirking ever so slightly in his creepy elfish way. JJ Project is the worst, Jackson decides, and crosses his arms.

“I wasn’t,” he mumbles.

Mark says nothing, and continues to say nothing for the rest of the ride, but, nonetheless, Jackson finds himself periodically peering over to check in. Mark never closes the two inches he put between them, and he never moves his head from its stiff angle staring out the window, even when Jackson knows he notices the staring. If he hadn’t noticed, he wouldn’t be so tense.

Jackson can’t really see his expression very clearly, and what he can see looks mostly blank, so it’s hard for him to judge whether Mark is just in one of his weird, solitary moods or if Jackson actually did something to incur the cold shoulder.

He doesn’t remember doing anything, but, since he doesn’t remember how he got back to the dorm last night or how he ended up on the floor of his room, it’s not impossible. Maybe Mark was lying about not noticing Jackson come in. Maybe Jackson said something, though he’s not sure what exactly he could’ve said to offend Mark. He complains about how little he talks to his face, so that wouldn’t be sufficient cause for the odd behavior, and Jackson doesn’t really have any other insulting things to say about Mark.

“Oof.” The seatbelt cuts into his chest as they stop rather abruptly in the parking garage under the studio. Along with the air in his lungs, it knocks the thoughts out of his head.

“Somebody kill me,” BamBam groans from the back. “My calves died yesterday; I can’t do this.”

“You can,” says Jaebum as he shoves his door open and steps out.

“I can’t. Jackson, help me.”

“I don’t want to help you,” says Jackson, following Jinyoung out into the dim, gasoline-infused air of the parking garage. “I want to find out what this guy is like.”

“Don’t you know the cat expression, hyung?” Yugyeom says.

“What?”

Mark slips out after Jackson and then walks around him to follow Jaebum and Jinyoung into the studio. Jackson tries to recall if this is normal Mark behavior or if he would normally wait. Is he overthinking this?

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Yugyeom says. “Sometimes you don’t actually want to know, and this is one of those times.”

“Bullshit,” says Jackson. “It’s always better to know.”

“I wish I didn’t know,” Youngjae says, tone somber.

“Me too,” says BamBam. “Pity my calves.”

The maknaes pile out. BamBam makes a face at the smell—he always complains about parking lots, all the cancerous chemicals—and then they follow the others inside.

Per Jaebum’s insistence, they take the stairs up to the dance studio. “It will wake you up,” Jaebum says. “Get your blood moving.”

Jackson doesn’t mind hugely, but BamBam and Youngjae are clinging to each other, panting, and Jackson keeps having to stop and turn back to hurry them along.

“We’re going to be late,” Jaebum frowns down at them from over the side of the railing one flight above. He would cut an imposing figure if it weren’t for the pimple on his chin. Jackson can’t quite take him seriously when his eyes inevitably focus on the little pink dot.

“Better late than dead,” BamBam pants.

“If you make us late, I’ll kill you myself,” Jaebum assures him before disappearing back over the railing. He doesn’t even have the decency to sound out of breath, and a second later his voice echoes back down at them with a curt, “Hurry up!”

They end up collapsing into the studio just on time. No one else is there yet, and Jackson takes the opportunity to stretch out his neck while Youngjae and BamBam huddle up against the mirrors. Yugyeom starts practicing some spin, squinting at his reflection like he’s reading a textbook. Jaebum is on his phone, and Jinyoung and Mark are dumping their bags next to one of the speaker sets on the far wall.

The long wall that doesn’t have mirrors is covered in a fake wood veneer. The grain is too regular and the surface too shiny to be real wood, but it’s a nice, sandy color that Jackson finds soothing. Right now, the air feels cold even though the floor fans are off, but that will change as soon as they start dancing. This studio has poor ventilation. 2PM laid claim to the good one long before Got7 was even a glimmer in JYP’s eye, back in the prehistoric age prior to Jay Park’s ignominious departure.

The wooden floor is a shade darker than the back wall, and it is made from real trees, though they’re locked below layer upon layer of protective sealant. It reminds Jackson of the floors at the gym he used to fence at, back in the prehistoric age before he moved to Korea. Scratch marks cut through the sealant, decorating the whole floor with a patchwork of pale swoops, lines, and darker smears. Jackson has probably spent more time looking at these floors than any surface in their dorm, maybe even than any surface at his parents’ apartment back in Hong Kong. The dance studio is like a second home.

“Morning,” says a business-like voice from behind. It is slightly on the deeper side and decidedly cool, if not cold.

Jackson turns to find an unfamiliar man striding from the door over towards the sound system, scrolling through something on his phone. He is not tall, but he’s taller than Jackson. Probably in his thirties.

“Good morning,” Jaebum and the maknaes reply, bowing. Their tone, though polite, doesn’t quite emit enthusiasm.

Jackson drifts towards the center of the room, and the others follow suit, pulled upright and together by the invisible force of habit.

The stranger plugs in his phone and turns back towards them, straightening. He has a slightly narrow face, made to look even pointier by the little, triangular goatee sprouting from his chin. His top half, though partially obscured by a thin, long-sleeved t-shirt, appears wiry, but his thighs are massive. Jackson already assumed he was the new choreographer, but, if he wasn’t positive before, the thighs confirm it. Only dancers, body-builders, and professional athletes have such chunky legs.

The man’s eyes, as narrow as his face, skim over Jackson and Mark before focusing more generally on the group. “I’m Han Minsoo,” he says. “I’m sure we’ll get to know each other as we go, but, since we’re already behind schedule, forgive me for skipping introductions today. We’ll run the dance from the top five times and then start the next section. For the two of you who just showed up, sit out until we start the new material, but pay attention. You’ll stay late today to catch up, and I want you to have a sense of what we’re doing. Any questions?”

Despite his words, he doesn’t wait, turning immediately back towards the stereo system and his phone, which is resting on top of one of the speakers.

The other members begin to reorganize themselves, and Jackson backs out. Since he has so many schedules separate from the group, he’s used to being behind. The sensation isn’t a pleasant one. It’s like observing ants or bees; everyone else knows where to go and what to do, working in a tightly timed, rote, and organized system. Jackson’s left as the odd bee out, bumbling about and feeling like all he’s doing is disrupting hive activity.

But he’ll catch up soon enough and rejoin the flow. It won’t be so bad this time because Mark is in the same boat.

He reconsiders this last bit when he glances over at Mark and finds him sitting stiffly against the fake-wood wall, all his limbs crossed tightly and pulled into his body. He’s tugged his hoodie up to partially obscure his face, and Jackson gets the distinct impression that he doesn’t want to talk.

Then again, if Jackson wants to work out what’s going on with him, there’s no better time. The music that’s just begun banging out of the speakers will drown out whatever they say, and no one will be paying any attention, preoccupied with keeping on top of their footwork.

Jackson hesitates for less than a second before sidling over and plopping himself down next to Mark, whose eyes flash towards him for the briefest of moments before returning to the center of the room.

“Hey,” says Jackson.

Mark’s gaze slides back towards him, but he doesn’t turn his head or say anything.

“How did your heat go?”

Mark stares for an infinite second, expression blank but eyes sharp and unwavering. By the time he finally blinks, Jackson’s own eyes feel like they’re watering. “Fine,” Mark says, but it sounds more like a question than a statement.

“Yeah? Seolhyun went through the same thing when she switched pills—or, I guess they’re not pills. Shots? Implants? I think she has one of those under-skin things. Anyway, she said it sucked. She was ticked off all the time, too… almost broke my arm with a lamp stand.”

Mark keeps staring. Jackson gets the same antsy feeling he had back in the dorm; it’s like Mark is waiting for something.

“Are you sure you feel fine?” Jackson asks. “You’ve been acting a bit funny... Did I say something last night?”

Mark stares for another interminable second, but his face isn’t blank anymore. His eyebrows have worried a line into his forehead, and Jackson can tell that he’s biting the inside of his lip. He only does that when he’s nervous. “No,” Mark says at last. “I didn’t even notice you come in.”

Jackson’s next to positive that he’s lying now. But Mark doesn’t seem angry, just uncomfortable or hesitant. A good sign, Jackson decides, because it means they can probably patch this up as long as Jackson treats him normally for the next couple days.

“Then you missed out. I’ve been told I’m a joy when I’m drunk.”

The line between Mark’s eyebrows doesn’t disappear, but his nose twitches to the right, and Jackson is about to go further when the music cuts off abruptly and Han Minsoo’s low, curt voice says, “Can either of you tell me a single step?”

He’s staring through the others at the two of them, and, though his expression is pretty flat, there’s some tightness around his eyes that wasn’t there five minutes ago.

“Uh…” says Jackson.

“Sorry,” says Mark, head bowed low.

Jackson dips his head, too. When he dares to peer back up, Minsoo is still watching them, but he turns away a half second later in favor of the stereo. “Again,” he says, and the music jumps back to life.

Jackson watches the dance this time, noting the moves he recognizes and the places where he knows he’ll mess up, but he glances over at Mark a couple times, too. Mark is staring hard at the dancers every time he does, biting the inside of his lip. He’s never been fast at picking up choreography, and he’s never been behind like this before. On top of that, the new choreographer doesn’t seem likely to cut him much slack. The next couple days will be rough for the both of them, rough with a capital R, but at least Jackson will have plenty of time to get Mark to forgive or forget whatever went wrong.

After about fifteen minutes, Minsoo cuts off the music and motions for Mark and Jackson to get up and join. He demonstrates the new section of choreography they’ll be learning once in real speed, and Jackson can already tell it’s going to be a bit of a bitch. It looks incredible, but there are lots of movements where Minsoo’s arms and legs seem to be moving completely independently of each other, and Jackson’s never been the best at dissociating muscle groups.

He can tell from Youngjae’s open mouth and the slant of Jinyoung’s eyebrows that he’s not the only one feeling apprehensive. In fact, only Yugyeom and Jaebum look like their usual selves, though perhaps more focused. BamBam is bent partially over, panting heavily, and Mark is still bunched tightly into himself, frowning at Minsoo’s feet as they swim over the floorboards.

When the music ends, they clap, but Minsoo waves them into silence and starts walking them through the first combination in slow motion. Then they just repeat it, again and again, until Minsoo considers their form acceptable.

No one does perfectly, and it takes all of them longer than it usually does, but, for the most part, they’re coming along steadily.

Except Mark isn’t. Mark doesn’t raise his arms high enough. He doesn’t kick fast enough, falling behind beat. He keeps miscounting the number of twists.

At first, Minsoo just corrects him. He isn’t sympathetic, but he barks out the necessary changes like he’s been doing for everyone else. “Mark, faster. Youngjae, lift your knees higher. BamBam, you’re off beat. Mark, you’re also off beat.”

And then they run it again. And again.

Jackson is sweating buckets. He’s already gone through a full bottle of water and they’re only on the second combination in the set of six that Minsoo wants them to get through today.

By the third hour in, Minsoo has stopped bothering to say Mark’s name. “Faster. Arms higher. Off beat. Jump. Jump. That’s where you’re supposed to jump.” And then he’ll throw in, “BamBam, move your feet. Eyes front, Jackson.” But the next second he’ll be back on Mark. “Faster, faster, faster.”

Jackson feels for Mark—he knows he just came off his heat and is probably feeling a bit weak and disoriented still—but that’s not an excuse for how badly he’s screwing up. Jackson is, after all, seriously hungover himself, and he’s keeping up. It wouldn’t matter except that every time Mark messes up and fails to meet Minsoo’s expectations, they all have to do it again, and it’s taking its toll on group energy and morale.

Poor BamBam had to sit out for a few rounds because he nearly threw up, and Youngjae’s come close to falling over twice now. Still, they’re both more consistent than Mark.

Finally, Minsoo gives up. “Sit out,” he says, and he doesn’t have to specify who he means. Mark doesn’t waste a second before removing himself from the formation and slumping against the fake wood of the back wall. He looks a bit green.

Minsoo’s expression is flatter than a lake surface, but something tells Jackson it’s the kind of lake that houses a kraken—lurking, unseen in its murky depths.

“Jackson, focus,” Minsoo commands.

Jackson makes a face at his reflection. Yugyeom may have been on to something with that cat saying. Jackson considers himself a young, virile man, but his thighs are whining at him in a distinctly unmanly way, and his lungs seem to be doing more wheezing than breathing.

As they progress to the fourth combo, Jackson ponders the likelihood that Minsoo is actually an agent sent by SM to destroy them. BamBam has clearly been destroyed, and Youngjae is well on his way. Even Jaebum looks a bit put out, and, since Jaebum must spend half his energy suppressing signs of weakness, this is an omen of imminent team crisis.

Luckily, Minsoo isn’t completely blind to the toxic cloud of defeat and exhaustion they’re emitting because, the next time he pauses the music, he doesn’t start it again.

“We didn’t get as far as I’d hoped,” he says, flicking sweat off his neck like it’s a fly rather than an anatomical warning mechanism, “but I can tell we’ve reached our limit here.” There’s a little pause before he adds, “You worked hard. Jaebum, Jinyoung, Youngjae, BamBam, Yugyeom—you can all go. Eat right. Sleep right. Don’t forget what we did today. Jackson and Mark, you stay.”

Jackson sits down where he’s standing. The others pick their way around him to go get their stuff.

BamBam gives his shoulder a sympathetic pat as he passes.

“Work hard,” Jaebum says, but his voice is thin and raspy, and it fails to convey the usual team-leader-alpha-big-man clout.

Even Jinyoung twitches his nose at Jackson in a way that might indicate commiseration. Jackson’s going to be optimistic about it.

“When should we send the van back?” Jaebum asks once everyone is bottle-necked at the door.

“Nine,” says Minsoo without looking up. He’s scrolling through his phone again.

Jackson’s stomach sinks to his knees. Nine. That’s four more hours. He really could die. Perhaps he should plan his funeral. Perhaps he should get water. He settles for the middle ground and contemplates what flowers would go nicely with a white coffin as he crawls towards the back wall to locate his water bottle.

The search is a short one; the bottle is lying on its side a couple feet from Mark’s leg, fencing team logo against the floorboards and the boring blue side pointing up.

“Mark,” Jackson pants as he gets a hold of it. “If I die, tell Yugyeom that I never actually forgave him for using the last of my fancy-shmancy body wash. That stuff cost a fortune, and it smelled fucking incredible.”

Mark doesn’t respond, and, after a minute of this odd silence, Jackson pauses the important task of hydrating to look up and assess the situation. Mark is staring at him in the odd way he was this morning: black eyes big and very still. Again, Jackson gets the disconcerting impression that he’s said something wrong.

“What?” he asks.

Mark shakes his head and turns towards the mirrors. “Nothing,” he says. “I’ll tell him.”

And, on this ominous note, catch-up practice begins.


	3. Broken Compass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that it took me so long to get this up. I had a hard time writing this chapter (and I'm still not all that happy with it), but I finally decided it was time to post it anyway!
> 
> Thank you to all of you who have read this so far, and especially to those of you who have left kudos, and especially especially to those of you who have commented! You are all wonderful. :)
> 
> (Also, I recommend listening to the 3racha song from which I stole the chapter title.)

_Does he remember?_

Mark is supposed to be focusing on the beat—Minsoo has reminded him at least a dozen times—but it’s difficult when his brain has morphed all the lyrics into the same chirping chorus: _Does he remember? Does he remember?_

Mark can’t decide.

This morning, after much consideration, he’d come to the helpful conclusion… maybe. Jackson could have brought up being naked and confused because, innocently ignorant, he saw no reason not to, but he could also have been taking a head-on approach to the problem: dismissing suspicious behavior before anyone had the chance to question it.

So Mark hadn’t known.

When he’d complained about Mark scooting away in the car, Mark had concluded… probably not. When he’d brought up Seolhyun’s suppressant struggles, the “probably” had become “definitely.” Even someone with Jackson’s questionable judgment wouldn’t compare his girlfriend to the guy he’d just fucked.

Or so Mark had thought. But then Jackson had said that thing about the body wash. Could it really be coincidence that he’d used the exact same wording? Was Jackson subtly acknowledging what had happened between them? Was he saying they should move on without talking about it?

“Faster,” Minsoo says, and, for a split second, Mark returns to the present time and place. He tries to give the hip twist more pop, but his hip doesn’t respond properly. Instead, it twinges, reminding Mark that there are bruises there shaped like fingers.

It doesn’t help that the studio practically reeks of juniper.

The longer they practice, the hotter they get, the more they sweat, and the more Jackson’s suppressants fail to prevent his scent from mingling with the studio’s typical humid fug. On top of Old Spice, B.O., and window cleaner, the air is now saturated with a spicy, earthy tang.

It invades Mark’s nostrils, creeps down his throat, clogs up his brain, makes his stomach turn, and sends acid climbing up his esophagus. To reduce the nausea, he tries to breathe only when absolutely necessary, but this has the unfortunate side effect of inducing dizziness.

He falters.

“Steady,” says Minsoo. “Keep steady.”

Not a minute later, Mark falls on his ass, and the jolt shoots a bullet up his spine. He’s pretty sure it wouldn’t normally ache that much, but he is not not not going to think about why.

“Are you hurt?” Minsoo asks. He doesn’t move from his station by the speakers, looking on with his eternally impassive expression. On accident, Mark meets his eyes, and then finds that he can’t look away. Minsoo’s stare doesn’t glint the way Jinyoung’s and Jaebum’s do, nor is it liquescent like Youngjae’s and Jackson’s. It is sharp but matte, jagged charcoal rather than obsidian, and, though there’s no fire yet, Mark feels certain the charcoal will go up in an impressive torrent of flames when Minsoo finally loses the last of his patience. If Mark continues fucking up the footwork, they probably won’t have long to wait.

“You good?”

Jackson’s hand drops into Mark’s field of vision, breaking the cold cord of eye contact.

Mark nods. He doesn’t want to take Jackson’s hand—the sweat smell rolling off him in tsunami-like waves is bad enough—but he doesn’t want to blow off the gesture either. Whether Jackson remembers or not, they have to get back to normal.

Mark takes the hand, ignoring the heat and the sliminess of the sweat, and lets himself get hauled upright.

“You sure you’re good?” Jackson asks, squinting at his face. “You’re expression looks…” Jackson attempts to replicate the expression rather than describe it with words. It looks pained.

And now Mark is again thinking about why he’s in pain, which is not not not what he wants to be thinking about. He takes a couple quick steps away and breathes in deep to calm himself, which proves to be a mistake when what might as well be a solid block of juniper pulp slams up his nose.

His head spins, he sways, and he barely manages to stop himself from falling right back down on his ass.

“Are you ready?” Minsoo asks.

Mark meets his eyes again. There’s nothing in his expression or tone that indicates impatience, but somehow Mark knows. He can’t tell what it is, but it’s there.

Mark nods.

“Are you sure?” Jackson asks. “You still look like you’re about to puke.”

Mark doesn’t doubt that that’s true, but he’s also pretty sure that the only way to get past the nausea is to get out of here. The longer he spends trapped in this overheated box with Jackson, the sicker he’ll feel.

 

When the van finally comes, Mark takes shotgun. It means he won’t have to worry about Jackson invading his space, but it does nothing to help with the smell. The driver today is the tall one who always keeps the fan on, circulating the air, and Jackson’s scent is everywhere in a matter of seconds. Mark leans his head against the window to keep his forehead cool, to keep his thoughts grounded. _Don’t think about last night. Don’t think about Jackson. Think about the horrible impression you made on the new choreographer. Think about how much your legs and stomach and head hurt. Think about how cold the window is. Think about—_

“Hey,” Jackson says. “Seolhyun just sent me this cryptic text. What do you think it means?”

Something (probably Jackson’s phone) pokes into Mark’s shoulder, and he leans further into the window to get away from it. The movement doubles as a shrug.

“Come on,” Jackson presses. “You’re an omega. Give me some insight here. I asked her if she wanted to get dinner tomorrow to celebrate the end of my filming, and she said, ‘Maybe. Let you know if I have time,’ but she didn’t say when she’d let me know. That’s weird, right? Doesn’t it seem like she’s mad at me?”

_She should be mad at you,_ Mark thinks. But if she knew, she would be doing more than sending angry texts. She’d track Jackson down, tear out all his hair, and then throw Mark off the top of the JYP building. Maybe she’d finish with a bang and drive a truck over his dead body, so then he’d be nothing more than Mark mush mashed into the asphalt.

Strangely, this doesn’t reduce his nausea, and he attempts to push his forehead more firmly into the glass. Its chilling effect is marginally helpful.

Though less potent than the guilt, Mark also resents Jackson’s implication that, just because he and Seolhyun are both omegas, he should know what she’s thinking. They’ve only met once, and the only thing they said to each other was ‘hi.’ He doesn’t know her. Jackson knows her. He should work it out for himself and leave Mark to peacefully enjoy his own internal crisis.

 Jackson pokes him with the phone again. “Mark, help me,” he whines. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Mark mumbles into the window. “She’s probably annoyed that you were busy filming and didn’t call her or something, so now she’s doing the same thing to you. I don’t know.”

“Dude, that’s totally it,” says Jackson. He punches Mark’s shoulder, and it aches. Mark tries to squeeze tighter against the window. “I swear there has to be some kind of secret omega language. How do you guys just get each other like that?”

Mark would like to inform him that it’s not a secret language, and it doesn’t have to do with being an omega. It’s called “emotional intelligence,” and anyone can have it. Jackson just doesn’t. But the portion of his mind that’s maintaining its tenuous grip on rationality points out that this isn’t fair.

“Hey, can we get food on our way back?” Jackson asks, head swiveling towards the driver’s seat.

The driver sighs. “What do you want?”

“Bulgogi.”

Jackson can’t remember. If he does, he’s a sadist.

 

It’s 2:00 AM, and Mark’s pretty sure Youngjae’s asleep, but he’s also a recent convert to the philosophy that one can never be too careful. He twists onto his side to better hide the light of his phone screen. If Youngjae somehow gets a glimpse of what he’s reading, it’s going to be a nightmare to explain.

“Urine vs. Blood,” the title of the loaded article reads in neat, eighteen point Times New Roman.

Mark had already decided he couldn’t buy a home test kit. There are too many associated risks: someone could recognize him at the convenience store; one of the other members could find the little stick thing in the trash… or the packaging. He kept picturing a traumatic scenario in which Jinyoung picked the bathroom lock while he was in the middle of peeing. It wouldn’t be the first time.

But almost all the information online was about urine kits—how much they cost, which kinds were most accurate, lots of angry reviews about false negatives, and a few about false positives. By the time Mark finally found his “Urine vs. Blood” article, his brain was doggy-paddling just to stay afloat in a roiling sea of amniotic fluid and cervix facts.

Now Mark scrolls through all the repetitive introductory text to the “Blood Tests” sub-heading. Only then does he start to read in earnest. There is a lot of scientific information that flows straight over his head, but he eventually locates the crucial facts. Seven to twelve days. That’s how long it will take before he can get an accurate result.

Mark closes the tab, clears his history, and then lies back to stare at the ceiling.

The kitchen sink is only thirty feet away. He could still drown himself.

A vibration through Mark’s palm sends his heart diving up his throat. He glances down to find that he’s received a text. From Jackson.

_Hey_ , it says. _U awake?_

Mark rubs his thumb around the rim of the home button—one circle, two, three.

He’s in an odd place where, on the one hand, he knows exactly how he got here, while, on the other, he still finds it almost impossible to comprehend. He thought he had a solid grip on life. He had a steady job, friends, good relations with his relatives, no PR disasters... He was on track. No, he wasn’t breaking any records, but he was definitely on track.

Where is he now?

How can he possibly wait a whole week to find out?

Mark drops his phone on the pile of clothes by his headboard and closes his eyes. It fails to stop the compass from spinning drunkenly in his head, but at least he has conclusively decided to avoid solving anything until tomorrow. Don’t people say things look lighter in the morning? Brighter? Maybe Jackson will remember overnight and come tell Mark what to do.

But when the morning dawns dim, gray-skied and muggy, Mark can’t help but feel that it’s foretelling his future. Jackson remembers nothing, and Mark has six more agonizing days to wait before he can find out if his life is over.

 

“Sharper,” Minsoo commands. “The movements need to be sharper.”

Mark can’t make them sharper; his joints are already close to snapping with each rapid extension—the right elbow in particular throbs like it’s already fractured—and his brain is tripping around on stilts inside his head.

Around him, the others droop as the music cuts off. They shuffle back to their starting positions like monks in a funeral procession, heads bowed low. The atmosphere is cold and grave despite the oppressive heat and humidity. It’s his fault, Mark knows, because he can’t seem to do anything right this week, but he doesn’t have enough energy to feel guilty when he can barely breathe. He’ll feel guilty tonight when they’re back in the dorm and everyone’s navigating around each other in exhausted silence. Such has been the pattern for the past ten days.

“Again,” Minsoo says.

Mark isn’t the only one stumbling this time. Minsoo ends it after just fifteen seconds.

“Again.”

But it doesn’t matter how many times they run it; Mark can’t move faster or sharper. He can’t quite get a hold on the beat. His mind keeps slipping away from him, unable to focus, and, for the brief moments it returns, his body won’t do what it says.

“Mark, stay,” Minsoo orders while the others slump to the edges of the room to collect their belongings. “Everyone else, go home. Eat right. Sleep right.”

Minsoo didn’t have to tell him; Mark hasn’t moved anywhere. He’s been staying behind every day, working on the moves long after the sun sets. Not that it shows in his dancing. His progress has been glacial.

The most tangible result of the extra practice is the amplification of Mark’s stress. Being trapped in the studio means that he hasn’t had a chance to sneak out to the clinic, and every day that passes without knowing sends a new tendril of anxiety up Mark’s spine. He can’t tell if the unusual exhaustion that’s been plaguing him is from the training, his mental state, or—the nightmarish possibility—because some small life form has taken root inside him and begun to suck out his energy for its own use.

“Mark, focus,” Minsoo snaps. “You have to focus.”

The others are gone now, and the room always seems darker when it’s just the two of them. Jackson caught up a week ago, and he doesn’t stay anymore. In many ways, this is good, but it also means that Minsoo’s sharp goatee and his sharper gaze stay pointed at Mark the entire time, stabbing him with an almost physical piercing sensation.

The music dies on the jarring reverberation of a snare drum.

“Like this,” Minsoo says, holding his right arm crossed across his chest and then snapping it down past his thigh. Mark doesn’t even see it move; it jumps from one position to the other. “Sharp.”

Mark raises his own right arm, but his reflection in the mirror doesn’t look like Minsoo’s. He looks like a sandpiper—disproportionate, spindly, and uncoordinated.

“No,” Minsoo says, striding over and taking hold of Mark’s forearm. The grip is a bit too tight. It doesn’t ache, but it pinches. “Like this.” He drags Mark’s arm higher and straightens his fingers, clapping them between his own hands to make them lie completely flat. “Keep it stiff. Like a board.”

Mark nods, and Minsoo retreats to the speaker to start the track over.

“Sharp, sharp, sharp.”

The music pops into silence.

“Snap your elbow straight. It’s a snapping movement. You can’t just drop your arm. Snap. Show me.”

Mark tries, but his muscles won’t contribute their full strength. Or perhaps, Mark considers, this is their full strength now. It’s pathetic. He can see how lifeless it looks.

Minsoo paces back towards him and takes his arm again. He’s holding tighter this time. “Like this.” He snaps it down, and Mark’s elbow smarts with sudden pain. It pulses hot and prickling, like a bit of the bone has chipped off.

His eyes water reflexively, and he can’t suppress the hitch of his diaphragm. A high, hiccupping sound escapes into the silence of the room.

Minsoo lets go, but he doesn’t back away. “Yes, it hurts,” he says. “Dancing hurts. That hasn’t stopped anyone else. Take a five minute break, and we’ll start again. You need to get this today.”

Mark shuffles to the edge of the room and drops to the floor. He leans back against the wall’s fake-wood panels, and, for several, slow seconds, they cool his neck. Then his sweat turns them as hot and slick as his skin, and Mark has to lean away.

He’s reaching for his water bottle when he hears his phone start to vibrate against the floor. It buzzes like an angry insect, falls silent, and buzzes again.

“You have five minutes; you could take that,” Minsoo says from the opposite side of the room. He’s looking down at his own phone, sifting through tracks like he always seems to do in his spare time.

Mark shakes his head, though Minsoo probably can’t see it.

The caller ID says “Dr. Gi.”

Mark has been avoiding his calls all week. Since he doesn’t know if he’s pregnant yet, and he doesn’t even know when he might find out, he can’t start the new suppressants. In theory, he could explain this to his doctor, but Mark met him through JYP, and he doesn’t know exactly what the connection is, or how much Dr. Gi discloses to the company. Safer to keep it all within the Omega Health Association, which he knows has strict confidentiality policies.

The phone stops buzzing, but the knot it worried in Mark’s stomach doesn’t loosen. He sips at his water, wipes away whatever sweat his t-shirt will absorb, and then stands up.

“Ready?” Minsoo asks.

Mark nods. _Ready_ is a relative term.

 

When Mark slouches through the dorm’s door two hours later, he’s decided to sleep for the rest of his life. It seems like a simple way to kill a shit-ton of birds with one stone. Unfortunately, the not-so-subtle face Jinyoung makes when they pass in the common room warns him that he can’t escape showering first.

He dumps his phone and water bottle on the couch and heads for the bathroom.

The shower has become his refuge. It’s the only place where he really feels alone. The water drowns out the sounds of the surrounding dorm, and the condensation that builds up on the glass door blocks his view of even the toilet and sink. It is just Mark, the soap bar, and the shampoo in a tiny, wet world full of steam and pleasant flowery smells. For twenty blissful minutes, he can convince himself he is last month’s Mark, the Mark whose biggest problem was the invincible zit on his nose. Or he can imagine that he’s even further away, in a distant jungle where there are no other humans for miles and miles. The shower feels appropriately humid for a jungle, and the shampoo’s aroma helps. Maybe he’s standing under a tiny waterfall in Indonesia, surrounded by vines with heavy, yellow flowers.

Mark is calm.

Mark is a sun-warmed stone.

But the feeling evaporates when he steps out of the bathroom, hair dripping on his shoulders, towel around his waist, to find Jackson walking towards him with Mark’s phone in his hand. The phone is ringing, and Jackson thrusts it at Mark’s chest and jiggles it up and down.

“It’s your doctor,” he says. “He called earlier while you were still showering.”

Mark’s intestines squeeze together.

He makes sure not to touch Jackson’s fingers when he takes the phone. If Mark has any luck, Jackson will walk away now that he’s completed his duty, and then Mark can let the call go to voicemail.

But Jackson stays standing there, looking on with a disturbingly earnest expression. He’s been looking that way a lot recently, trying to be extra helpful to set things back on track between them. Much as Mark would like to help the effort, he can’t. He can’t quite crush the seed of resentment that sprouts in his gut whenever he considers Jackson’s convenient amnesia, and it’s hard to act how he used to when Mark himself remembers everything much too clearly.

It doesn’t help that Jackson’s eyes keep flicking down to Mark’s chest. They never stay there, jumping almost immediately back up to his face, but it’s disconcerting. Mark has nothing with which to cover himself. All he can do is angle his body away and try to pull his nerves together as he presses the talk button.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mark,” comes the familiar, steady voice. “This is Dr. Gi. I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for a few days now.”

“Yeah, sorry,” says Mark. “I’ve been… busy.”

“No worries. I was just hoping to find out if you’ve had your heat yet.”

“Uh, yes,” Mark says, since he’ll have to tell him eventually. “Yes, I have.”

Jackson’s still standing there, watching. He’s obviously waiting for Mark to finish the call and tell him what it’s about, which rankles something under Mark’s skin. It’s Mark’s private medical information, not Jackson’s business. Alphas always seem to feel they have a right to know about the wellbeing of any omega in their vicinity, but Mark’s positive they would blow a fuse if any omega tried to do the same to them.

“Oh good,” says Dr. Gi through the phone. “How did it go?”

“Fine,” says Mark.

“No complications? The hormone levels can sometimes exceed the norm when you’ve spent that long on suppressants.”

“I didn’t notice anything.”

“Great. Well then, I’d like to schedule an appointment to get you started on the new drug as soon as possible. Do you know what your availability is like for the next few weeks?”

This is what Mark was hoping to avoid. “Sorry,” he says, picking at a scratch on his elbow, “but things are actually kind of hectic with work right now? That’s why I haven’t been returning your calls. Again, sorry about that. Can I call you back… when I have a better idea of when I might have time?”

“Of course,” Dr. Gi says. “Don’t worry about me; I’m not offended.” There’s a smile in his voice, but it gets more serious as he continues. “But you should try to work in an appointment soon. Within the next two months at the latest. Spending too long off suppressants can make it more difficult for your body to readjust, so don’t forget to call me, alright?”

“I won’t,” says Mark.

“Alright then. Have a nice night.”

“You too.”

“What did he say?” Jackson asks as soon as Mark hangs up.

Mark would really like to explain that he has no obligation to tell Jackson anything, but, in the interests of ending this conversation quickly and avoiding unnecessary friction, he settles for, “Just about getting back on suppressants.”

“Oh yeah,” Jackson nods, like he has intimate knowledge of the subject. “You really shouldn’t delay that. Seolhyun switched drugs once, too, and she ended up going through two heats before she could get back on because the second one came a lot sooner than normal.”

Mark kind of wants to strangle him with his towel, but, unfortunately, he needs it. The way Jackson’s eyes keep flickering downwards is uncomfortable enough even with the crucial areas covered.

“I have catch-up dance practice,” Mark points out, making a move to the right and hoping Jackson will get the hint that he needs to back up so Mark can leave.

Jackson does back up, but he proceeds to follow Mark towards his room. “Who cares? Tell the tyrant you have something more important to do. He can’t stop you from taking care of necessary medical stuff.”

“Maybe,” Mark says. They’re almost at his room, which, though far from a safe haven, at least provides partial seclusion.

“Seriously,” Jackson insists, “Seolhyun’s doctor said the influx of hormones can cause all kinds of weird behavior. You should make an appointment.”

There are so many issues with this statement that Mark doesn’t know quite where to begin. For one, Mark is not Seolhyun. Her medical history has nothing to do with his, and the fact that Jackson keeps comparing the two of them has been grating on Mark’s nerves for days. Two: yes, Mark knows he’s been colder to Jackson than usual, but the fact that Jackson is dismissing it as hormone-induced “weird behavior” like he has any clue what the fuck he’s talking about is maddening. And finally, the thing that really digs at Mark is that Jackson seems to think he has some right to provide input. What Mark does or doesn’t talk about with his doctor and what he does or doesn’t do with his drug regimen is exactly none of Jackson’s business. Jackson is neither his father, brother, boyfriend, nor husband, and he has no say in what Mark does with his body. None.

Thoroughly ticked off, Mark spins around in the door to his room and levels Jackson with the flattest look he can manage.

But Jackson isn’t even looking at his face; his eyes are fixed somewhere around Mark’s navel.

“Eyes up,” Mark snaps. He has a vague idea that he might be overreacting, and a clearer idea that Jackson might be right—the hormones have made him more sensitive—but, at the moment, he is pissed off, and he wants Jackson to feel it.

Jackson’s gaze does snap up, a bit sheepish, and Mark funnels the full force of his irritation into his expression. He holds unyielding eye contact as he says, “Let me handle my own medical issues.” This, he thinks, is pretty tame compared to the hundreds of other things he’d like to say.

But Jackson’s eyebrows cinch together, and his lower lip disappears beneath the upper one. “Sorry,” he says, tone gone somewhat short. “I just want to help. You’ve been acting different.”

“Prying into my medical issues isn’t helping,” Mark says. “Let me handle it.”

It isn’t fair that Jackson looks irritated. He doesn’t have the right to know. He isn’t Mark’s anything. His primary role in Mark’s medical drama is “Source of the Problem,” but he doesn’t even know that.

“Fine,” Jackson says. “Sorry I asked.”

Mark can almost feel the air snap as Jackson spins around and strides off towards his own room, gait martial and stiff.

Mark supposes he’s succeeded at both ending the conversation and making Jackson feel shitty, but it hasn’t done much to dilute his own frustration. When he shuts the door, the bang shakes the wall.

He turns towards the center of the room and realizes with a sick spark that Youngjae is there, sitting on his bed. Youngjae’s eyes flick quickly down to his phone screen, but not fast enough to stop Mark from noticing.

Nothing stays private in the dorm.

The thud when Mark drops his towel is dull, unsatisfying, and he pulls on his boxers and sleep shirt too fast and ends up scratching his thigh. A tiny line of red bubbles up. It barely stings, but the amount of blood is impressive for such a small cut. The drops merge to form larger drops and then begin to roll along Mark’s leg, dragged downwards by their own weight. Watching them, Mark feels the tight pressure of a knot rising in his throat. His eyes go dry and itchy.

Youngjae clears his throat, and Mark’s chest freezes. He waits, unable to breathe when the tension in his body has turned the surrounding air solid.

“You’re not wrong,” Youngjae mumbles.

Mark remains bent over, turned away from Youngjae, but he twists his neck to look. Youngjae glances up at him for a split second before dipping his head back down. His hair slides forward, obscuring his face. “About Jackson prying. It’s not his business.”

Mark sits down on the edge of his bed and scrubs a finger across his eyes. He waits until the knot in his throat has partially subsided before trying to speak. “Thanks,” he says, voice still tighter than normal. “But I’m fine really. We’ll be fine.”

Youngjae doesn’t respond, but Mark supposes he wasn’t really saying it to Youngjae anyway. That boy is wise beyond his years. Someday, when Mark is more mentally stable, he should buy him flowers. Or dinner. Youngjae would probably appreciate that more.

“Hyung,” Youngjae says, voice more determined than a moment ago. “I think I’m going to go to sleep now.” He yawns, and his mouth stretches as wide as one of Yugyeom’s bagels, but Mark isn’t fooled. A second ago, Youngjae looked perfectly perky. “Can I turn off the light?”

“Yeah,” says Mark. He can’t quite bring himself to smile, but he nods at Youngjae and hopes that this conveys his gratitude. They both know that Mark is the one who needs darkness to preserve his dignity.

If only Jackson were half so tactful.


	4. Other People

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello wonderful people! Sorry for the long wait. I go back to school soon, so, unfortunately, future waits will probably be even longer. I also only recently learned that replying to comments is a thing, so I apologize for not doing that in the past and I will be doing so from now on! Finally, if you do not want any spoilers, do NOT read the rest of this author’s note.
> 
> If you don’t mind vague spoilers, and if this chapter causes you to worry, I assure you that the endgame is Markson. Also, the next chapter should return to Jackson's perspective and will thus probably be lighter.

Three days later, Mark’s sure he’s going to snap from the anxiety of not knowing, so it’s a good thing that his opportunity arrives that evening.

He’s half an hour into his solo practice when Minsoo receives a call. It doesn’t last long, but, as soon as it ends, Minsoo says, “I have to take care of something,” already striding towards the door and keeping his eyes on his phone. “I’ll be back in a couple hours. Stay here and practice. You should have at least the fourth set in solid condition by the time I get back.”

He disappears through the doorway, and Mark listens to the thumps of his sneakers down the stairs. The room rings with the silence, an eerie vibration that, after half a minute, Mark realizes is his own racing blood.

He’s painfully aware that this might be his only chance.

He walks towards his bag slowly, stepping lightly, and keeping his eyes on the door in case Minsoo returns. But he doesn’t. When Mark reaches the bag, the only sound in the studio is still the chug-chug-chug of his pulse in his ears, and he decides that, yes, he is doing this now, and, if he doesn’t want to get caught, then he better do it fast.

His hands fumble over his sweats, which he pulls on, only to take off again to tie around his lower face like a scarf. His legs aren’t identifiable (or so he’d like to think). His nose, mouth, and chin are. He pulls on his beanie and sunglasses, checks himself in the mirror to ensure that he looks more like an impoverished skier than an idol, and then sprints for the door.

He’s had the directions to the Omega Health Clinic memorized for days, so he doesn’t have to pull out his phone to check. On the way there, he restrains himself to a fast walk—no point in drawing unnecessary attention—but nobody seems interested anyway.

When, fifteen minutes later, he arrives, the structure doesn’t look how he pictured from the online photos. It has the same white stucco walls and brown-shingled roof, but it’s smaller. There’s a large, shiny-leaved bush outside that covers almost the entire width of the front wall, and some of its branches stick up above the gutter line. Maybe the clinic isn’t small; maybe the bush is big. There was no bush in the photos, and Mark would like to think that that’s because the photos were old and not because someone photoshopped it out. He has more faith in an organization that’s out-of-date than one that lies, although it does indicate a certain lack of attention, corroborated by the shabbiness of the clinic’s sign. It’s the slide-on-letter kind Mark associates with small-town high schools, and it says “Om   a    eal   Clini :   lease co  e in!”

Though Mark is no longer so sure he wants to go in, he’s already there, and the longer he spends lurking out by the bush, the more likely it is someone will walk by and recognize him. He checks that his sweats are still covering his lower face and then speed-walks to and through the door.

The electric chime that announces his entrance makes his heartrate spike, and, only once he’s gotten it back down to a survivable speed does he take a moment to survey the entry chamber. Like the whole building, it’s small, low-ceilinged, white-walled. There’s one of those odd, dark-leaved, not-quite-a-tree houseplants in the corner by a squat blue couch, and, across from that, a desk. Behind the desk is a middle-aged woman with short, curled hair and pointy glasses. She reminds him of Ursula.

She spots him, and her heavily painted mouth breaks into a smile. She beckons him over. “Hello, dear. Come here. Come here. I don’t bite.”

Mark plods over, pulling his sweats up higher and keeping his head bent. Given her age, there’s a possibility she won’t recognize him regardless, but caution is the new maxim.

“I’m Taehee,” the woman says, pressing a hand to her ample bosom. “Nice to meet you. You, of course, don’t have to introduce yourself if it makes you more comfortable. We’re strictly confidential, but we don’t require names. Can I ask what brings you here today?”

“I…” Mark realizes he hasn’t had to say any of this aloud yet, and the prospect is daunting. “I would like to get tested.”

Taehee nods, still smiling lightly. “For anything in particular, or the whole caboodle? I only ask because some tests don’t require a blood draw, so I’d send you to a different room.”

Mark shakes his head. “Anything,” he says. “Everything.”

“Alright. Well, dear, you’re lucky that we’re pretty empty right now, so I can set you up with one of our nurses right away. If you go through that door—” She points to the only door in the room other than the entry. “—you’ll find yourself in a little hallway. Just open the first door to your left and you’ll be in Exam Room 1. Seori will meet you there in just a few minutes. Okay?” She smiles up at him. “Any questions?”

Mark shakes his head. “The left?”

“Yep. First one on the left. Just go right on in.”

Mark does.

If the entry chamber was small, the exam room is tiny. Mark has never had to deal with publicly funded healthcare before, and he wonders if it’s possible to make anonymous donations. With the state of the website and the state of the sign, can he trust that their equipment is up-to-date? Do they even know the modern techniques for these things?

Mark has little time to wonder because not a minute later the door springs open to admit another middle-aged woman. Where Taehee was plump, this woman is bony, accentuated by how she walks with her shoulders thrust back. Her hair is full of silvering strands, and her face is wrinkled around the mouth.

She closes the door behind her and then turns to look at Mark. Her expression actually reminds him a bit of Minsoo: flat, unsmiling, hard to read.

“I’m Seori,” she says, striding further into the room. “I’ll be performing your exam today.” She points at the cushioned table in a clear indication for Mark to get on it, and says, “Fill me in on the situation.”

Mark can’t sit gracefully because the table is at the height where he has to push up onto his toes to get his ass on it. It’s an embarrassingly awkward maneuver. “Situation?” he asks once he’s perched on the edge.

“You told Taehee you want to get tested. Unless you tell me otherwise, I’m going to assume you meant STD testing. Should I also be checking for pregnancy? Are you on birth control? Suppressants? Any other drugs? Any vitamins?”

Mark feels a bit overwhelmed, and it must show on his face because Seori slides onto the stool and lets her shoulders hang forward. “Let’s take a step back,” she says. “What’s your name?”

There’s a long moment of silence.

“You can give me a fake one, but we _are_ strictly confidential. I won’t tell anyone else anything you tell me, even Taehee.”

Mark hesitates a moment longer, but there’s not much point in holding out. He’s already entrusting these people with his health. “Mark.”

There’s no spark of recognition on her face. “Alright, Mark. It’s nice to meet you. Again, I’m Seori. I’m a nurse. Do you feel comfortable taking off your scarf?” She stares at the sweatpants wrapped around his face.

Mark, cheeks a bit hot, unwinds the pants’ legs and sets them down behind him on the exam table.

Nothing changes in Seori’s expression. Either she doesn’t know who he is, or she’s very good at hiding it. “Do you feel comfortable telling me whether or not you had unprotected sex?”

Mark’s brain jolts a little, and his cheeks grow hotter. That’s why he’s here, but it’s still uncomfortable to admit. He holds his breath and nods.

“How long ago?”

“Two weeks.”

“Were you in heat?”

“Yes.”

Seori’s lips purse up. “Did you consent prior to the onset of the heat?”

Mark doesn’t want to say no because it’s clear where she’s going, and saying no would imply something that isn’t the case, but he can’t say yes either.

After a deafening moment of silence, Seori spins on the stool to rummage through a drawer. She pulls out a business card and hands it to him. “I’m not a counselor of any kind. You can probably tell. But those people are if you want to talk. I’m assuming from your silence that you don’t want to press charges, and I’ll tell you now that you probably wouldn’t have a lot of luck anyway since it’s too late to collect physical evidence, but, if you want, it’s an option.” She shrugs. “Back to the testing part… I need to know if you’re taking anything that could affect the readings: birth control, suppressants, other medications, vitamins… Anything like that?”

Mark shakes his head. “No. Not right now.”

“Recently?”

“Not for months.”

“It’s a personal decision,” Seori says, “but in general I recommend being on at least one or the other: birth control or suppressants, if not both.”

“I usually am.”

Seori nods and doesn’t press the issue. “So, to confirm, you want me to test for the full spectrum of STDs and pregnancy, is that right?”

Mark nods.

“Anything else?”

He shakes his head.

“Alright. Then I’ll draw some vials of blood now to get that started. Also, if you weren’t aware, you should come back in a couple months to get tested again. A few common diseases occasionally won’t show up until later.”

“Okay,” Mark says numbly as he watches her snap on gloves.

The blood-drawing itself is almost painless. He looks away. There’s a prick. And a minute later, Seori is backing up.

“You’d usually have to wait a week, but, lucky you, today’s the day we run the samples.” She doesn’t sound like she thinks he’s lucky. She mostly sounds bored. “I’ll have your results in thirty minutes if you want to wait.”

“Ah, okay.”

Seori regards him with a cocked eyebrow. “That was a question. Are you going to wait?”

“Yes,” Mark says, face going a bit itchy. “Yes. Here?”

“Sure,” Seori shrugs. “It’s a slow day. But go back to the waiting area if Taehee tells you she needs the room.” She spins out the door then, the vials of blood wedged between her fingers like manicure separators.

Mark waits and tries not to think. He has to pee, but it isn’t distracting enough. He forces his eyes to follow the lines of the cabinets and the buckles in the linoleum floor, some of which have already split at the top to become cracks, some of which probably have a few months to go. When he’s run out of cracks, he counts the ticks in the ventilation system. Mostly it’s a low buzz, but every now and then something hidden up in the ceiling produces a clicking sound. Mark has no idea what it could be, but it’s irregular, and that makes it appropriately thought-consuming.

He avoids reading the posters on the walls. Since they’re all in Korean, and his brain has never gotten to the point where it subconsciously reads Hangeul the way it reads English, this isn’t as difficult as it might be.

The pictures still pop out at him, making it impossible to forget where he is: a bright pink uterus, yellow lining—they’ve made the ovaries purple for some reason, like two laminated grapes—but at least he doesn’t have to learn the details of how it all works, or whatever symptoms they might be telling him to look out for. If he focuses on the ticking of the vent with enough determination, he can see the posters as abstract works of art, odd blobs of bright colors with no sinister anatomical meaning.

Eventually, the sound of footsteps in the hall calls his attention away from the vent, and then the door opens to admit Seori.

“Tests are done,” she says as she snaps the door shut behind her.

Mark feels an almost physical realignment within his body as Seori becomes the new center of the universe. She’s standing just inside, shoulders stiff again and her expression still flat. She doesn’t appear particularly interested or invested, but few people have ever had more important things to say in Mark’s world.

“You’re clear on STDs,” she says. “Nothing showed up, but remember to get re-tested in a couple months. And congratulations. You’re pregnant.”

Her expression and voice are still flat, not at all congratulatory, and that doesn’t match what Mark thinks he heard, can’t be right, so he says, “What?”

“You have no STDs, but you’re pregnant,” Seori says more slowly.

Mark’s vision seems to have gone a bit blurry, but he can tell that she’s looking at him now.

“I take it that isn’t good news to you.”

The words sound tinny. There’s a dissonant ringing gaining volume in Mark’s ears. “I can’t be,” he says.

Seori sighs and takes a couple steps further into the room. Distantly, Mark hears the creak of an opening cabinet and then the friction of cardboard and plastic and wood as Seori begins to rummage through the contents. “You are,” she says. “When you aren’t on birth control and you have unprotected sex, it tends to happen. There’s a pamphlet in here somewhere that explains some of the next steps.” After a moment of rummaging, she peers back at Mark, and then she sighs again. “If you didn’t want to get pregnant, you should’ve taken the day-after pill. You can get them here for free.”

“What?” It’s hard for Mark to keep up with the words. His brain is buzzing, nonfunctional.

“You haven’t heard of the day-after pill?”

She thrusts a shiny cardboard box at Mark’s chest. He takes it on reflex and examines the purple design on the front, which looks like a stream of food-dyed water. It reminds him that he has to pee.

“Should I take it?”

Seori gives him a raised-brow look over her shoulder. “It’s too late now,” she says. “It’s called the day-after pill for a reason. If you don’t want the kid, you’ll have to get an abortion.” She turns back to the cabinet she’s been sorting through. “But keep that. Next time, use it.”

Mark’s mind echoes with the word _abortion… bortion… bortion…_ His mouth is so dry that his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, but he forces himself to swallow. “What would… an abortion mean?”

“You’d sign a bunch of forms, take the medications I’d give you, and then lie down. I’d sedate you, stick a tube up there, and suck everything out. It takes about ten minutes.”

“That’s it?”

“Here,” Seori says. She’s finally located the pamphlet she was looking for, and she waves it in Mark’s face until he takes it. Then she sits down on her metal stool and spins towards him. It produces a squeak that spikes through Mark’s head like an ice pick.

Mark looks at the smiling woman on the pamphlet cover instead of Seori, but he can tell she’s staring at him.

“That’s it,” she says. “Is that what you want to do?”

None of it feels real. The woman on the pamphlet is smooth-skinned and pretty; she must be an actress. Is she even actually pregnant? How can she be smiling like that? Why are her teeth so perfect? Her stomach is impossibly spherical. It can’t be real.

He lifts his eyes to the room’s walls, which are a light blue color that’s probably meant to be soothing. It just reminds Mark that he still really has to pee. Peeing is something real. This room is so small, so neat, like a dollhouse. It doesn’t feel real; it feels like he’s playacting someone else’s life, a scene in a music video or something. He’s done that before. This is too foreign. All the instruments on the counter look like alien probes.

“Mark,” Seori says, and his eyes focus on her without his brain’s consent. Her face is serious without being sympathetic. She reminds him a bit of one of his high school teachers… Ms. Alpen… or was it Lapen?

“Before I ask you this,” Seori says, holding his eyes with intimidating solemnity, “I want you to understand that I am a hardcore believer that Omegas get to choose what to do with their own bodies. Never let anyone pressure you to pick one way or the other. On the other hand, if you have no idea what you want, which, by the looks of it, you don’t, it can be helpful to talk. Did you ever discuss this possibility with the mother or father?”

The father. Oh god, that’s Jackson. How surreal. The father. He knew, but he can’t fit the words together in his head. Jackson. Father. Jackson.

“No,” he manages. It sounds weak, watered down. “He doesn’t know.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“No.”

Seori’s expression doesn’t change. “Do you have someone else you can talk to?”

Mark imagines telling his mother and quickly tosses the possibility. She’d help, but Mark can’t do it. His sister would be better, but he already knows what she’d say. She’s always been aggressively pro-choice, and, despite the word “choice,” to her it really means pro-abortion. Mark has grown too distant from his American friends to share something so personal, and everyone he knows in Korea knows Jackson. Except— “You?”

Seori blinks a couple times and puckers up her lips. “Sure. Fine. Then let’s start with this… What would you do if you had the kid?”

“I don’t know,” Mark says automatically. His brain still feels like it’s floating in some misty, other-world.

“Well think,” Seori says. “Would you put it up for adoption? Raise it yourself? Do you have the money to support it? Do you have people who could help you?”

“Can adoption be…” It takes him longer than it should to find the word. “Anonymous?”

“Yes.”

“I could do that. I think. I don’t know.” He should know. These are the things he has to know, the things he should’ve begun considering two weeks ago when he first realized this was a possibility.

“Fine. Let’s move on to the other key question. How do you think you’d feel if you got an abortion?”

“I don’t know. I don’t… know.”

He thinks about his sister again. He pictures her telling him what he knows she’d tell him— _don’t let one mistake stop you from living the life you had planned; don’t let your gender dictate who you are_ … But Mark’s never exactly had a plan. He’s never actively carved out his own course and character the way his sister has. The biggest decision of his life, signing JYP’s contract, was mostly the product of chance. Some scout spotted him in a hallway. His grades were mediocre at best, and he thought, _why not?_

He imagines taking whatever medications Seori has, lying down on the table, letting her stick something inside him… Ten minutes, she said. His stomach aches, and the metallic taste of bile surges over his tongue. The past thirteen days of torment, over in ten minutes.

“No,” he says.

How can it only take ten minutes?

“I can’t. I can’t.”

Seori keeps watching him with her mouth puckered. “You have weeks to change your mind, you know. You don’t have to decide now.”

“No, I can’t,” Mark repeats. He shakes his head fast, trying to dispel both the dizziness and the image of lying on the table. “I know I can’t.” It’s not about morality; it’s about weakness. He isn’t strong enough to take the medication, stretch out on that table, and keep himself together. He isn’t strong enough to make the pro-choice choice. He can only let what happens happen and then blame biology and fate for however it turns out.

“Okay,” Seori says, spinning her stool back around towards the desk with another piercing squeak. “Then let’s walk through what the next nine months are going to look like.”

 

On the walk back to the studio, all the smells are too strong. He nearly retches when he passes a food truck selling some kind of fried meat, and the chemical, flowery air wafting out the door of a department store makes him so dizzy that he has to lean against the wall for a minute. If people stare at him, he doesn’t notice. He hardly sees more than a meter in front of his feet, making abrupt swivels to avoid trees, pedestrians, and signposts.

It’s mostly by luck that he eventually arrives at the entrance to JYP’s studio building, and it’s habit that carries him up the stairs.

He never realized before quite how hot the studio is. His head and neck burn. Sweat collects at the backs of his knees. By the time he reaches the fourth floor, the heat has sizzled away the numbness that’s been shielding his mind from his new reality.

He is pregnant.

He is _pregnant_.

He has nine months to go. Nine months is almost a year. He is going to be pregnant for almost a year.

He walks into a wall.

He steps back and looks up.

Han Minsoo’s narrow, dark eyes look back. They are harder than any wall. His expression is an impenetrable, black barrier.

Mark feels split between two worlds. The Mark that dances and raps in Got7 is not the same Mark who is having a child in nine months. “I went to the bath—”

“I don’t care where you’ve been,” Minsoo says, and his voice is octaves lower than Mark remembers. “I’ve been waiting here for forty-five minutes, so I don’t care at all where you’ve been. Where were you supposed to be?”

Mark thinks it’s a rhetorical question at first, but Minsoo keeps staring and doesn’t speak. “Here,” Mark says at last. Distantly, he’s horrified to find that his voice is already cracking.

“Where were you supposed to be?”

“Here,” Mark repeats.

For a moment, it looks like Minsoo is going to say more, but he doesn’t. He snaps around and strides into the dance studio.

The lights are on, but it’s dark, and it’s sweltering. Mark closes the door behind himself and immediately feels claustrophobic. He sets his bag by the wall and removes his hoodie mechanically before swaying towards the center of the room.

In the mirror, he looks skeletal. There’s none of the rounded fullness and vibrancy that the woman on the pamphlet cover exuded. Mark looks and feels washed-out, empty. The knowledge that something is coming to life inside him jars discordantly with what he can see of himself. The Mark in the mirror looks like a university senior staying up all night on coffee to hack out an overdue thesis. He doesn’t look pregnant. He doesn’t even look healthy enough to get pregnant.

When the music starts, Mark’s body responds joltingly, always a millisecond behind. He isn’t dancing; the music is dragging him along like a marionette, and it’s obvious in the mirror.

The lights bleach out his skin. The shadows eat at his edges.

Perhaps not a marionette then; perhaps he’s a corpse, animated by a necromancer with a twisted sense of humor. He’s turning Minsoo’s beautiful choreography into something lifeless and disturbing.

He can never be a parent.

“Faster,” Minsoo barks, sharper than he usually would. “Can you hear the beat?”

He can, but it’s hard to separate from the resounding banging of his heart, which seems to be gaining speed with each passing minute.

“Focus!”

Mark executes the first half-spin in the sequence and starts counting from one again. Four. Five. Drop. Dip. Eight. Nine months. Nine months.

“Sharper, Mark! Sharper!”

They restart from the top.

And again.

And again.

Minsoo’s voice gets louder each time he pauses the song and drags the playhead back. His finger stabs at his phone screen with such force that Mark can picture it cracking the glass. He hears it shatter, even though he can see the phone sitting whole and unbroken atop the speaker.

By the tenth time they run it, Minsoo has stopped saying anything except, “Again.”

Mark has stopped sweating and started shivering.

There’s one part in the song, in the middle of Jackson’s second rap, where he says “baby” in English, and Mark’s stomach seizes tighter each time he hears it. It’s not right. The thing inside him is not a baby; it’s a collection of cells. In a week or so it will be a “fetus.” It’s not a baby. It’s not Mark’s baby. It’s definitely not Jackson’s baby. It’s not Jackson’s anything. Mark isn’t Jackson’s anything.

The music stops. “Again.”

Mark lets the beat drag his limbs into one position after the next. If Minsoo wanted him to dance, he’d be giving instructions. This is punishment.

Mark supposes he deserves it.

“Baby.”

He stumbles.

The music stops. “Again.”

“Baby.”

The contents of Mark’s stomach have been pushed up his esophagus, pressing outwards, making him gag.

“Again.”

“Baby.”

Mark’s whole body pulses and the room blurs and spins. He slaps a shaking hand over his mouth and scrambles towards the door.

It’s only three meters to the bathroom, but his knees have barely slammed into the grimy tiles in front of the toilet before everything he’s swallowed that day is coming back up. His diaphragm heaves, and his eyes sting, but not as badly as his throat and nose. He can’t breathe. He just keeps choking, and choking, and spitting out acid.

The door cracks into the wall as someone enters, shaking the ground and sending Mark’s head through a new tunnel of nausea. He can’t tell if the tightness in his throat is because he’s vomiting or because he’s crying. He’s not even sure if he _is_ crying, or if it’s just because he feels so sick. If he’s crying, he doesn’t know why.

There’s pressure on his back.

He can’t see, but he knows it’s Minsoo’s hand.

Mark’s spine tightens under the touch before accepting it. He continues to heave and spit. Fluids pour from his eyes and nose and mouth, and he feels like a toddler. Disgusting. How can he be a parent when he’s not even an adult?

Fingers, blissfully solid and cool, unstick Mark’s hair from his forehead and cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Minsoo says, voice stilted and gruff. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He should be sorry, Mark thinks, but not as sorry as Jackson should be. Not as sorry as Mark is.

“I’m sorry.” The fingers keep pulling through his hair even after it’s all unstuck from his face, and the other hand stays firmly in the center of his back, unshakeable despite the force of Mark’s tremors.

Slowly, they ease the nausea. Or maybe it’s just the passing of time. The vomiting subsides, leaving only the ache, the shivering, and the tears behind.

“I’m sorry.”

Mark twists and presses his head blindly into Minsoo’s chest.

Minsoo’s hands jump off of him instantly, and Mark can feel that he isn’t breathing, but it doesn’t seem important. Even coated in sweat, Minsoo smells comfortingly mild in the way only betas do, and the rough cotton of his shirt is grounding.

“Mark?”

“Sorry,” Mark mumbles into the shirt, voice obscured by fabric and mucus. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know what to do,” Mark tells him instead of answering. “I don’t know what to do. I fucked up. I think I really fucked up this time.”

Minsoo’s hand returns to his back, patting. It doesn’t feel good exactly—the rhythm is odd, and Mark’s muscles are too strained to take it—but it keeps him from spiraling down into the miles of muck built up inside his head.

“This isn’t about dancing,” Minsoo says.

It isn’t a question, so Mark stays silent.

“I should take you back to your dorm.”

Mark shakes his head immediately, hair catching on cloth. “No,” he says. “Not— I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I’ll kill Jackson.” His breathing is almost back to normal, the shivering reduced to an occasional jolt, but he still feels sick. “I really will.”

“What did he do?”

Mark shakes his head again, leaning away and rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand. Again, disgusting. Part of him really wants to tell Minsoo. Minsoo is an adult. Minsoo is competent. Minsoo will tell him what to do the way he always does, snapped commands that Mark will struggle to follow.

But he knows he can’t do that. If he tells anyone, he has to tell Jackson first.

“Okay,” Minsoo says, standing up.

Mark’s vision is still blurry, and he can’t make out his expression, but he does see the hand Minsoo proffers.

Mark takes it and lets Minsoo tug him out of the stall to the sink. Minsoo drops his hand then and stands behind him as Mark turns on the tap. The freezing water he splashes on his face sparks new shivers down his spine, but they’re the normal kind.

When he rubs the droplets out of his eyes, he finds that Minsoo is watching him through the mirror. His expression is as flat as ever, but it’s less dark than Mark remembers. The narrowed eyes no longer carry the spear of accusation to which Mark has become accustomed.

“Are you being melodramatic?” Minsoo asks, maintaining eye contact through their reflections.

Mark is too tired to be offended, and he can tell Minsoo is asking it seriously, not as a roundabout way of saying, _suck it up_. Mark shrugs, lowering his eyes back to the faucet. “I don’t know.” His voice is still cracking, so he stops himself from saying more and just shrugs again.

“Are you being melodramatic?” Minsoo repeats.

Mark darts his gaze back up and finds that Minsoo is still staring, eyes surveying Mark’s reflection in precise little movements.

“It’s serious,” Mark manages. “It’s not… some petty thing. It’s serious.”

“But you won’t kill Jackson.”

“No,” Mark admits after a moment. “I’ll just say something I shouldn’t. Or I’ll break his fencing gear. I’ll probably kick him.”

“I didn’t know Jackson fenced,” Minsoo says. He doesn’t sound interested.

Mark shrugs again, returning to his study of the faucet.

“So not the dorm,” Minsoo says.

Mark shakes his head.

He can feel that Minsoo is still watching him, assessing.

“Okay.”

Mark meets his eyes again, unsure what ‘okay’ means.

“Call your manager. You can have my couch tonight.”

Mark doesn’t have the energy to be surprised. He nods. “Thank you.”

 

Minsoo’s flat is tiny. Mark never gave it much thought before, but he supposes Minsoo probably doesn’t have a lot of money. He choreographs because he’s passionate about dance; not because it’s a lucrative career. Perhaps this is why he doesn’t like Mark, who can never do justice to his creations.

The flat’s decoration indicates how much dance matters to its owner. The furniture is pushed oddly into corners and against walls, almost completely obscuring the only window in the main room in order to create an open space on the floor. The furniture itself is mostly wooden or plastic, and it has the distinct spotted, stained, and faded quality of things bought secondhand.

“That’s the couch,” Minsoo says unnecessarily, pointing to a low sofa that is pea green and too short to make a good bed. His mouth appears smaller than normal, and he only holds Mark’s gaze for a second. Mark realizes with a dim sort of wonder that Minsoo is uncomfortable. It’s odd. Minsoo has always been an unshakeable presence to him rather than a person, the way teachers and lecturers are. It’s disconcerting to see him fumble for the right words and expressions.

“I can show you the shower,” Minsoo offers, voice gruff, and Mark realizes he has been watching in silence, which is probably creepy.

He nods.

Minsoo leads him to a closet-sized bathroom with green-tiled walls. It smells like cheap soap and old pipes, but at least the lighting is bright.

“I’ll leave clothes by the door,” Minsoo says. “Use any of the towels. Or don’t. They aren’t completely clean, but I don’t have others.”

Mark nods, waiting in the doorway to see if there’s anything else Minsoo has to say.

Minsoo mirrors the nod and then strides further down the hall to the part of the flat Mark has yet to see, a mysterious, shadowy realm.

The water sputters occasionally, but it gets hot enough to burn, which is how Mark wants it. He’s not sure if he’s trying to burn off any invisible traces of where he’s been or if it’s part of himself that he wants to remove. Probably a bit of both. He needs to be cleaner, better.

He has a brief moment of panic where he wonders if it’s too hot for the thing inside him, but, after the quick squeeze of his chest, the tightening of his throat, he reminds himself that that isn’t how anatomy works. _Homeostasis_. Is that what it’s called? Is it bad that he’s looking to high school biology as a pregnancy handbook? This would be so much easier if there were someone with equal stake in the situation to ask, but that thought leads to dangerous territory. The temptation to tell Jackson could easily grow into a real possibility if Mark lets it, so he has to stay on guard.

When he shuts off the water, the bathroom is clogged with steam, but he’s shivering.

The clothes Minsoo left are too big, but they smell wonderfully of soap and beta. Mark has never spent time contemplating how Minsoo smells before—betas don’t smell like much—but it’s a bit nutty, a bit like spice, like the scent hanging in the kitchen after someone has baked. Mark lets it warm him.

He finds Minsoo in the main room, stirring something in a pot on the single-burner stove.

“Soup,” Minsoo says when he notices Mark hanging by the hallway entrance.

Mark doesn’t know what he’s meant to say to that, so he nods yet again, and then, unsure what to do with himself, goes to sit on the pea-green couch. There are two blankets folded at one end that weren’t there before. They look as old as everything else in the flat, tiny fuzz balls clinging to them like burs. Mark’s eyes start to prickle. This is how it is for other people, isn’t it? When they find out they’re pregnant, they go home, and someone provides them with all the things they might need. Someone makes them soup. Maybe that someone isn’t their choreographer, but it could be, couldn’t it?

Minsoo brings over two bowls of soup and sits next to Mark on the couch. “Eat it,” he says as he extends one bowl Mark’s way. “It’s not good, but it has the important nutrients.”

Mark is a bit slow to take it. When Minsoo looks up, his expression goes through a series of shifts that, in other circumstances, might be amusing before it settles on a light mix of confusion and exasperation. “You’re crying again,” he says.

“Sorry,” says Mark. He is crying, he realizes. He can feel a tear leaving a cool trail down his cheek.

“Don’t apologize,” Minsoo sighs, setting his soup in his lap. “Is this still about Jackson?”

“I don’t want to talk about Jackson,” Mark says, and it’s true. Jackson doesn’t remember. Jackson isn’t here. Jackson’s only part in this is biological, and that counts for nothing. It’s Minsoo who is here, Minsoo who has made him soup and given him clothes and blankets, and Minsoo who is trying, in his own odd way, to be emotionally supportive.

Mark sets the soup on the floor.

Minsoo watches him, expression blank again, difficult to read. But, still, he’s watching. Not Jackson, not anyone else… Minsoo. Minsoo could have asked Mark’s manager to sort it out. He could have asked Mark if he had any friends. He could have dropped him off at a hotel. Instead, he invited him here, into his own home. It’s not a professional decision; it has to be something else.

Minsoo’s eyes track his movement as Mark leans across the couch, tensing at the corners when Mark crosses the invisible social boundary. When their mouths meet, Minsoo stays perfectly still for a long moment, and then puts a hand on Mark’s chest and pushes him back a foot. The hand stays there, holding him off, and Minsoo uses his other hand to move his soup from his lap to the safety of the floor.

“Mark.” His voice is low, a little bit irritated, and his eyes are the familiar stony black, the same disapproval Mark’s seen so many times in practice. Except now they flicker from side to side, cataloguing Mark’s expression. “You’re projecting.”

Mark’s not sure he’s wrong. He can still feel the cold line the tear painted down his cheek, the heat of more in his eyes. He’s not sure it matters. There are a hundred places Mark could be right now. He could be in the dorm, destroying his most important relationships in Korea. He could be alone in a hotel, staring at clean white walls and stock photos of the Seoul skyline. He could be trapped in a room with his manager, unable to say anything for fear of letting something slip. He could be wandering back to the clinic, crying to Seori that he changed his mind, just get it out, get it out.

But he isn’t any of those places. He’s in an actual apartment; he has worn clothes and used blankets. He has homemade soup.

It doesn’t matter if he’s projecting. He bites his lower lip in the way the fan posts say is sexy and places his hands on Minsoo’s shoulders, one after the other, so that they nearly touch his neck.

They hold eye contact. Mark waits for Minsoo to say something, to tell him he needs to leave, to tell him it isn’t like that between them, to push him all the way off.

But all he does is stare.

And then, for a fractional second, his eyes drop to Mark’s mouth.

When Mark leans into Minsoo’s hand, it gives easily, and then they are chest-to-chest. Mark shimmies his knees forward until he’s crouching over Minsoo’s lap, sweat pants brushing together and brushing skin in turn. He reconnects their mouths, and, this time, Minsoo kisses back.

It’s controlled and precise, the same way Minsoo dances. Letting him take charge is the easiest thing Mark has ever done. His muscles and mind slacken. He lets Minsoo’s mouth and hands guide him into each press and parting of lips, and, when Minsoo eventually flips them over, the couch’s threadbare cushions cradle him like clouds. This is how it is for other people, isn’t it… when they find out they’re pregnant.


	5. Love Lives of the Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, I’m a little obsessed with alliteration.  
> On a different topic, I'm sorry for the long wait. I got wrapped up in university and my term-time jobs. But now I'm on break! This chapter is a bit of a mess because I wrote it over a long period of time in a lot of little, non-chronological chunks, so I apologize for the lack of cohesion. Thank you as always for all the lovely comments you have left and for hanging in there over the months without updates.  
> I wish you all luck in your own academic and professional pursuits if those are still going on! Or, if you’re just enjoying life right now, enjoy it well!  
> -MD out.

Jackson strides into the common area and sets his hands on his hips. “I’m calling an alpha meeting,” he announces.

“That’s not a thing,” says Jinyoung.

BamBam and Jaebum, who are sitting on either side of Jinyoung on the couch watching an American action film, don’t even blink at Jackson’s pronouncement. Mark is still holed up at the dance studio, and Youngjae is hiding off who knows where. Yugyeom, who was in the process of buttering a poppy-seed bagel, is the only one who has the decency to stop what he’s doing and look up.

Jackson knew Yugyeom was his favorite.

“What for?” Yugyeom asks. “Why can’t the betas be there?”

“Sexism,” says Jinyoung.

“Because it’s an alpha thing,” says Jackson.

“Sexism,” Jinyoung repeats.

Jackson ignores him. “Jaebum? Are you listening?”

Jaebum grunts, but he’s squinting intently at the subtitles on screen, and Jackson gets the impression that the alpha meeting is low on his list of priorities.

That’s fine; there are other ways. “Good,” Jackson says loudly and starts to stride back the way he came. “Then I expect to see the two of you in Jaebum’s room in two minutes.”

Jaebum’s head whips around like an owl. “My room?”

Jackson doesn’t answer. He proceeds on course down the hallway.

“Did he say my room?”

Pushing through the door, Jackson crinkles his nose at the musky scent that hangs in the air. Does Jaebum ever do laundry? The floor is uncluttered, but only because everything is piled on top of the dresser and desk. Jackson isn’t the posterchild of organization himself, but at least his piles don’t run together like Jaebum’s do. As long as he remembers which pile is which, things don’t get lost.

Jackson sniffs Jaebum’s quilt to determine that it is adequately sanitary before sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“Get off,” Jaebum commands. He’s standing in the doorway, and the frown he’s wearing makes him look like one of those angry, vegetable-stand ahjummas. If Jaebum actually owned a vegetable stand, Jackson bets he wouldn’t lower the price of whatever oddly colored carrots he was selling even for starving leukemia patients.

“Make me,” says Jackson.

This is the wrong thing to say. Though Jackson fancies himself the muscle pig of the group, he’s no match for Jaebum’s raw determination, and it’s only a matter of seconds before he finds himself planted firmly on the floor.

Yugyeom wanders in to join them and closes the door without being asked.

Jackson knew Yugyeom was his favorite.

Jaebum is his least favorite. Jackson graces him with his ugliest scowl, but Jaebum takes no notice. He has taken over the bed, and he’s busy smoothing out the quilt like Jackson somehow damaged it just by sitting there.

“Why do you have so many gourd paintings?” Jackson demands. He doesn’t actually care, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind to throw in Jaebum’s face.

Jaebum’s eyebrows snap down. “They’re not gourds,” he says.

“They look like gourds.”

“They’re not. There are a variety of different kinds of vegetables, and I have them because all my relatives are farmers, and my uncle likes to paint.”

“Can’t he find better things to paint than gourds?”

“They’re not gourds!”

“If this is what alpha meetings are like,” Yugyeom cuts in, “I’m getting BamBam to name me an honorary beta. Why are we talking about gourds?”

“We’re not,” Jaebum says. He continues to frown at Jackson, but his voice has returned to an appropriate indoor volume. “We’re going to talk about Jackson’s problem with Mark.”

Jackson forgets to blink, more than a bit taken aback. He hadn’t thought Jaebum had any idea what they were there to discuss. Perhaps blatant favoritism wasn’t the only reason JYP named him leader.

“It’s not my problem with Mark,” he says once he’s recollected his thoughts. “It’s Mark’s problem with me. Has he been acting weird to either of you since his… thing?”

“Heat,” Jaebum says. “His heat. Since when are you embarrassed by words?”

“Heat,” Jackson articulates. “Heat, heat, heat. I’m not embarrassed. You’re embarrassed.”

Yugyeom ignores this tangent and lowers himself slowly to the floor, face smooshing up how it always does when he tries to think. “Maybe? I thought he was just generally a bit touchier, but, like, not to me specifically.”

“I don’t think he’s developed an aversion to alphas, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Jaebum says. He’s still frowning at Jackson, but at least he seems to be taking the question seriously now. “He’s just more sensitive.”

“So he should go back on suppressants, right?”

Yugyeom’s face smooshes further, and Jakson is reminded incongruously of a sponge—smooshy, sponge face. “Doesn’t he have to do that anyway?”

“Exactly,” says Jackson. He knew Yugyeom was his favorite, the very best kind of sponge. “But it’s like he’s putting it off. I brought it up a couple days ago, and he blew up at me.”

Yugyeom shakes his head. “Omegas.”

Jaebum’s penetrating stare finally slides away from Jackson to penetrate Yugyeom, his eyebrows rising. “What do _you_ know about omegas?”

Pink suffuses Yugyeom’s cheeks and nose, and he stares off at one of the vegetable watercolors.

“Don’t pick on Yugyeom,” Jackson commands. “He’s agreeing with me. Mark’s being difficult.”

“Did you come here to solve your problems or complain?”

“Both.”

“Well we can’t tell you what Mark’s thinking. You have to ask him.”

“Thank you, O Wise Leader. I didn’t think of that.”

Jaebum doesn’t look appropriately perturbed. “ _Have_ you asked him?”

“Of course! He said nothing was wrong. But, obviously, something’s wrong.”

Jaebum hums and nods, like it all makes sense to him now, but it’s Yugyeom who says, “Doesn’t that mean you’re already supposed to know?”

Jaebum keeps nodding. “You must’ve done something wrong.”

“But I didn’t!”

“You did,” Jaebum says with complete confidence. “You just don’t know what it was. You have to make a list of everything you did before he started cold-shouldering you, and then you have to think carefully about each point on that list and how it could relate to Mark, and then you might figure it out.”

“That’s so… roundabout,” Jackson protests. “Why can’t he just tell me? I’d be happy to apologize. I’m dying to apologize! I just need to know what it is.”

“That isn’t a question you ask,” Jaebum informs him. “You have to accept that betas and omegas don’t think the same way we do. It makes sense to them.”

Jackson frowns and narrows his eyes at Jaebum. “How do _you_ know so much about omegas? I don’t remember you seeing anyone.”

“I keep my dating life private,” Jaebum says.

Yugyeom snorts. “Dating life,” he smirks. “You mean—” He makes a loud popping noise with his tongue.

Jackson and Jaebum both stare at him until his face dips into an appropriately ashamed expression.

“How did I never realize you were so thirsty?” Jackson asks, trying to see Yugyeom in a sexual light for what’s probably the first time in his life. It’s disturbing the same way it’s disturbing to see a puppy kill a baby bird. Yugyeom has nice shoulders, Jackson supposes, and he’s tall, but his face is so… spongey.

No, it’s too disturbing to think about.

“While we’re on the topic,” Jaebum says, keeping his impassive gaze leveled on the maknae. “You need to stop staring at Jinyoung’s ass.”

Jackson whips his head to stare at Jaebum so fast that he pulls a muscle. “What?!” he demands. He twists back towards Yugyeom, praying that one of them will explain. A new rip has been ripped in the universe, and someone has to take responsibility. But Jaebum just stares at Yugyeom, and Yugyeom just goes flaming red.

“Or,” Jaebum continues. “If you have to stare, at least be more discrete about it.”

“Jackson didn’t even notice!” Yugyeom protests, pointing to Jackson as if he is Museum Exhibit A—the white rhinoceros; it grazes, blissfully unaware of the approaching lions. “I _am_ discrete.”

“Jackson isn’t perceptive,” says Jaebum, “and it’s Jinyoung who told me to tell you.”

Yugyeom’s face is so red it’s actually purple, like a very large plum. Jackson might find it fascinating if he wasn’t so horrified that he’s apparently been a white rhinoceros this whole time. How has he been walking, sleeping, breathing, oblivious to this juicy band drama? It suddenly seems a lot more plausible that he could have overlooked some offense he committed against Mark.

“He wouldn’t,” Yugyeom says, but his voice is gruff and his expression somewhat guarded. “If Jinyoung had a problem, he would tell me directly. He’s not scared of confrontation.”

“Yes, true,” Jackson rushes to say, “but can we return to the part where you’re checking out his ass? Can we talk about this? Like, why? And since when?”

One of Jaebum’s eyebrows outstrips the other. “Didn’t you want to talk about Mark?”

“Yes, but that was before I discovered Yugyeom’s into Jinyoung’s weird bubble butt. We have time.”

Yugyeom, however, has clammed up, and he no longer seems able to meet either of their eyes, looking instead at the carpet and picking bits of who-knows-what out of it with his fingers. They appear to be tiny white flakes, and Jackson isn’t going to question why they live in Jaebum’s carpet.

Jaebum shrugs. “I’ve said everything I have to say, and I’d like to end this meeting before Yugyeom destroys my rug.”

“We can’t go now!” Jackson protests. “I haven’t recovered. Yugyeom, explain! In detail.”

“I just remembered that I’m supposed to call my sister about her new job,” Yugyeom tells the rug as he bumbles to his feet. “Good talk. Let’s do this again sometime.”

“Let’s not,” says Jaebum.

“Wait!” says Jackson.

But Yugyeom is already out the door.

Jackson jumps up and points an accusatory finger at Jaebum. “How could you know about this and not tell me?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?! I’m supposed to be Yugyeom’s mentor-slash-guide to alphahood. How can I fulfill my duties when I didn’t even know he was into betas? And since when have you known?”

“Yugyeom doesn’t need a mentor.”

“He definitely does. He totally, definitely does.”

Jaebum gives him a look. “Are you done?”

“Done?! I’ve been betrayed! By you! And you’re asking if I’m done?”

Jaebum just stares.

“Which reminds me,” Jackson says, momentarily sidetracked from his anger, though he won’t by any means forget that Jaebum is a secretive piece of filth. “Did Jinyoung really ask you to tell Yugyeom off? Because that isn’t like him, like, at all.”

Jaebum only sighs, sitting still and relaxed on the edge of his bed. It’s frustrating how he so obviously thinks he holds the monopoly on group maturity. “If you paid more attention, you wouldn’t have to ask, and I’m not just saying that about Yugyeom and Jinyoung. Now get out of my room.”

“I won’t forget this,” Jackson warns, but he does leave, not because he’s concerned about Jaebum, but because he needs to track down Yugyeom while he’s still unsettled and pliable if he’s going to have a chance of prying the Jinyoung story out of him.

The quest doesn’t last long. Jackson gets derailed only moments later when who but Jinyoung intercepts him in the hallway and shoves a cardboard box into his chest.

“Fan mail,” Jinyoung says before spinning away towards his room.

Jackson watches him leave. It’s hard to tell the shape of his ass through the loose, checkered fabric of the sweats he’s wearing. It actually looks kind of squarish, but that might be because there’s something in his back pocket. Not ideal conditions for a scientific study; he’ll have to check back some other time.

Jackson takes the box of fan mail to the couch and begins sifting through it haphazardly, keeping an eye out for fun illustrations but mostly still contemplating what’s so special about Jinyoung’s ass. Jackson’s full attention only gets drawn to the mail when he comes across a really disturbing drawing that he thinks is supposed to be him as a kitten. He pays more mind after that, and he’s just set aside a red, construction-paper heart—some fans weren’t blessed with originality—when a plain white card catches his eye. It’s no more special than the heart; it’s printer paper, eight by eleven. All it says is, “Jackson. Love from your biggest fans: Jihyun and Daehyun,” and then there’s a photo, presumably of them. In the photo, they’re sitting in front of a white wall, forming a hand heart together.

The thing that catches Jackson’s attention is that he recognizes them. Two omegas, a girl and a boy. They almost look like siblings—the same thick eyelids and delicate noses, the same kinked smile—but they’re just close friends. Jackson has met them at every fan sign he’s ever done in Korea. They show up to all their Music Bank performances, every concert, and a surprising number of Jackson’s solo schedules. The problem is that they also sometimes show up other places—grocery stores, malls, restaurants. It’s not like they’ve ever done anything. They’re perfectly polite. When they see him outside of official events, they usually just wave or bow.

But it can’t be coincidence, and, even when they’re just standing next to each other, smiling politely with their identical eyes, Jackson sometimes gets the sense that little spiders are crawling over his ankles. It bothers him that he can’t put his finger on it.

He piles all the other cards on top of the plain white one and sets the box aside, but the spider sensation lingers. He’s just getting up to resume his Yugyeom quest when the distinctive squeak of the front door diverts his attention.

Mark’s standing in the entryway, evidently just now returning from the studio. He’s leaning on the wall as he kicks his shoes off, and the back of his head shines dark under the hallway light, hair clumpy. Wet. He doesn’t sweat much, so the fact that it looks like he just stepped out of a pool means Minsoo must’ve worked him half to death.

Jackson vividly remembers the last time he told Mark to do something about Minsoo—Mark was wet then, too, and the glint off the water turned his nose sharp enough to cut—but Jackson’s ankles are still crawling, and his facial muscles are taut and buzzing, and he doesn’t have the will power to force an artificial calm when he knows he’s right. It’s a half-second spiral effect from there before he’s marching towards Mark.

“If you don’t tell him to back off, I’m going to,” Jackson announces, ploughing forward until he’s only two feet from Mark, effectively boxing him into the entryway.

Mark, ostensibly absorbed in poking his sneakers into the drunken line of other shoes, startles straight. He stumbles back a step only to wince as his hip bangs into the doorknob. It’s all a matter of less than a second, but, in that time, his expression slips from shocked to pained to mildly annoyed as fast as flipping frames. “What?”

“Minsoo,” Jackson clarifies, staring into the cooling black of Mark’s irises. How does he still not get that it’s a problem? “Tell him he needs to back off, or I will.”

The steel doors snap down across Mark’s face. While Jackson was expecting as much, it still stings. He doesn’t know when or how he became the enemy. Minsoo is supposed to be the enemy. A common enemy. Even without his specific brand of shittiness, the fact that he is the choreographer and they are the dancers should be enough to determine the sides.

But Mark’s voice is disturbingly uninflected when he asks, “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s completely psychotic!” Jackson snaps. “He can’t expect you to meet whatever impossible standards he’s looking for if he kills you every day. You’re literally drenched in sweat.” He flings a hand towards Mark’s shirt only to realize that the light blue cotton there is, in fact, not drenched at all. In fact, now that he’s looking, none of Mark’s clothing is wet. Save for his hair, Mark actually looks pretty dry. And he doesn’t smell anything like sweat. He smells clean. Like shampoo and dinner rolls.

“I showered,” Mark says at the same time that Jackson realizes as much.

He recognizes rationally that he’s made a mistake; there is no cause for his irritation, but the tension behind the words is a physical force. Like a wave, it can’t dissipate until it’s crashed, and so the frustration sizzles into his next question. “Where did you shower?”

“At a sauna.”

“Why?”

“Because I was sweaty.”

“Why didn’t you wait?”

“Why would I? Do I need permission to shower? Why does it matter when, where, or how I shower? If I want to shower at one AM in the kitchen sink, I will do that.”

“No, you won’t,” says Jinyoung, who apparently returned to the kitchen some time during their conversation, and who is now standing by the counter making a sandwich. It’s one of his disgusting kimchi and cheese sandwiches, and the fact that he’s interrupted their argument to eat, not even a good sandwich, but literally the shittiest sandwich to ever darken a deli counter, makes everything that much worse.

Jackson fully plans to stomp Jinyoung into place, but he barely has time to inhale before Mark has spun towards the counter and snapped, “Yes, I fucking will!”

There is a ringing second of silence. Somewhere in the recesses of the dorm, a door thuds.

Jinyoung, who for once in his life appeared taken aback, resets to his default boredom and takes a bite of his sandwich. A piece of kimchi falls to the counter. “Let me know when the nuclear fallout clears,” he says to neither of them, or perhaps both, and slips out of the main room into the hallway.

Jackson turns carefully back to Mark, who doesn’t look like he’s about to bite anyone else’s head off. He just looks tired. Really tired. Jackson’s anger at Minsoo (and at Mark for not handling the problem) spits out some more sparks, but he tamps it down. He tries to think back to the alpha meeting, what they decided he’s supposed to do in this situation, but there are too many rips in his mental sifter now, and the conclusion slips through.

“I’m sorry,” he says, figuring that that’s always a solid place to start.

But somehow it’s not. “No, don’t worry about it,” Mark says, looking to the left of Jackson’s waist, somewhere on the living room floor. His voice is calm now, tired but not yet betraying the same level of exhaustion as his posture. “It’s not your problem. None of it’s your problem. Just… don’t worry. I’ll figure things out.”

Jackson steps aside reflexively when Mark makes to get around him, and he watches him retreat to the back of the dorm, struggling to work out where it went so wrong. He doesn’t know exactly what he was apologizing for, but he can’t not worry about it. He doesn’t want to not worry about it. He wants to fix it, and maybe he can’t, but he would do his best if Mark would give him even the hint of a bearing instead of leaving him to stumble around in complete darkness. It’s maddening.

The worst is that he knows tomorrow they’ll be pretending this didn’t happen, back to the brittle replica of their former relationship. It’s the pattern these days. Something rubs; they snap; and then they smooth a thin layer of butter over it, hiding how Jackson can feel their friendship splintering. They go through the motions of how they used to act before Mark— just before. But it’s different. It used to be easy. Now Jackson’s just lost, lost, lost.

 

Three days later, he’s almost fooled into believing they’ve recovered. He spent the whole van ride to dance practice complaining about BamBam (who broke his electric razor), and, as they walk up the stairs, Mark continues to nod at the right moments long after everyone else has pretended to go deaf.

“He doesn’t even have facial hair,” Jackson points out, in English now that Mark is his only audience. “What was he doing with it?”

Mark shrugs.

“That thing was expensive.”

“How much?” Mark asks.

“Thirty-thousand? Forty-thousand? That’s not the point, Mark. The point is it was a nice thing that BamBam destroyed for no good reason. The point is that now I can use BamBam’s pomegranate hair gel with immunity.”

Mark doesn’t smile, but his face starts in that direction. “Impunity?”

“Is there a difference?” They step into the dance studio and the temperature rockets up ten degrees. Jackson wheezes and pulls his shirt away from his skin. “Jesus. What I need impunity from is this heat. Seriously.”

Mark tosses his bag against the wall. “Immunity,” he says.

Jackson scowls. “Don’t pretend like you speak English better than me just because you’re American. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“You can only say that with immunity because you’re impune to truth.”

“That didn’t make sense.”

Mark squints for a moment. “Yeah, I switched them. I meant, you can only—”

“You tried,” Jackson interrupts, whacking Mark on the back before heading off to claim his favorite patch of floor for stretching. It’s also Yugyeom’s favorite stretching spot, so he has to act fast.

Practice begins slowly. Minsoo gives them an unprecedented amount of time to warm up, and then they review sections he’s already green-lighted before diving into the problem sets. It’s nice but also unsettling because Minsoo doesn’t do slow. Jackson’s muscles settle the first time Minsoo commands Youngjae to pick his feet up. It sets things back on a more normal course. The sky is up. BamBam’s stupid. Minsoo is an emotionless hard-ass.

It doesn’t strike Jackson until an hour in when he happens to catch Mark come out of a really sloppy spin that there’s something else odd about this practice. Minsoo isn’t digging into Mark. In fact, Jackson doesn’t think he’s said anything to Mark at all today, which is a record.

Or maybe not. Jackson tries to remember the past couple days. He doesn’t remember Minsoo saying much to Mark then either. Again, the world tips slightly off balance. He tries to examine the two more closely after that, which mostly gets him barked at for missing beats, but is not completely fruitless.

They look at each other.

It’s weird because Minsoo is sometimes looking right at Mark when he messes up, but he doesn’t say anything. They just… hold eye contact, and then one or both of them look away.

A bubble of pride swells in Jackson’s chest. He hasn’t mentioned Minsoo to Mark at all since the other night, but it seems like Mark might’ve actually taken his advice and told Minsoo to cut it out. That would explain the tension. And the silence.

Jackson knows he’s onto something when, after practice, BamBam says, “Is it just me, or does Minsoo not yell at Mark, like, at all anymore?”

The six of them are lounging in the room outside the recording studio, waiting for Mark to come back from the bathroom so they can go eat. It’s team bonding night.

“Mark’s improved,” Jaebum says as he scrolls through his Twitter feed.

“But, like, he doesn’t get after Mark for _anything_. Not trying to pick a fight, but it’s just a fact that half of us are better dancers than he is, and Minsoo still calls us out for shit.”

“I bet he broke the Mark-o-meter,” Yugyeom, who nobody knew was listening, suddenly pipes in. He’s slouched across half the room’s only couch, staring at the ceiling like he isn’t fully invested in their conversation.

“I don’t like it when you try to be funny,” says Jinyoung. “It reminds me why ‘hashtag cringe’ shows up so much on our Twitter page.”

Yugyeom scowls and sinks deeper into the couch.

“Don’t pick on Yugyeom,” says Jackson. “I bet he’s right. You know how you can be bothering Mark and he seems totally chill about it and everything’s good and then bam! Flash flood, mudslide, tsunami—he flips out? I bet Minsoo said one too many shitty things and Mark bit his head off, so now he’s gotta play it safe.”

“The snowflake that broke the camel’s back,” BamBam nods sagely.

“That isn’t a thing,” Jaebum says, still with eyes only for his phone.

“It’s a branch,” Yugyeom mumbles from his couch blob.

“No, it’s a straw,” says Jinyoung.

Yugyeom props himself on his elbow, eyebrows snapping together. “No, I meant the snowflake. The snowflake breaks the—”

“Jinyoung was right,” says Jaebum.

Yugyeom sits up all the way. “No! What I meant was—”

“Not about that,” Jaebum says. “About Twitter. Half the comments on the selca you posted have the hashtag cringe tag.”

Yugyeom shuts up after that.

“I don’t know,” says Youngjae, who Jackson forgot was there. “I don’t get that vibe.”

“From Mark and Minsoo?” says Jackson. “Seriously? They’re being awkward as shit.”

Youngjae shrugs. “I just don’t get that vibe.”

“Explain yourself.”

But Youngjae only shrugs.

“Youngjae,” Jackson whines, “share your mystical wisdom.”

“Stop bothering him,” says Jaebum.

“I wasn’t!”

“Youngjae,” Jinyoung mimics the whine, and then goes flat-faced. “You weren’t what now?”

“Why do you two randomly team up on me?” Jackson scowls. “Jinyoung’s not even in the hyung line. He’s the weird middle guy, but I’m always the one you push out.”

“Because I’m more mature,” Jinyoung says. “And, please, fight me on that. I would love to start pulling receipts.”

BamBam interrupts Jackson’s brilliant rebuttal. “Thank god! I’m starving,” he says, “You took forever,” and Jackson contorts around the back of his chair to find that Mark has returned, standing just inside the doorway with his spine and limbs somewhat droopier than when he left.

Jaebum slithers off his chair, and suddenly everyone’s in motion.

Jackson loses track of Jinyoung, so he points a threatening finger at Yugyeom instead. “This isn’t finished,” he warns.

Yugyeom already looked troubled, so it’s hard for Jackson to tell if his words have any impact. “Hyung,” Yugyeom says as they’re all getting mashed out the door by the force of common will, “ _You’ve_ heard of the snowflake that breaks the branch, right?”

Jackson’s annoyed with Yugyeom for ignoring his obviously much more important problems with Jinyoung, so he says, “Isn’t it a straw and a camel?” and pushes ahead of Yugyeom to walk next to BamBam.

They end up going a full fifteen blocks. Youngjae heard about some new ramyun place from his non-famous friends, and Jaebum said that the weather was right for ramyun (whatever that meant) so the decision was made. Group decision-making is something Jackson’s never really understood. It’s not a dictatorship, but it’s probably closer to a dictatorship than a democracy. Except there’s more than one dictator. An oligarchy?

The point is… Jackson did not sign up to walk fifteen blocks. But, once they’re there, he can’t help but get excited, irritation with Jinyoung and Yugyeom temporarily set aside. It’s big, lots of tables, lots of people, and Jackson feeds off the energy of so much movement and noise. The walls are kind of sparse on decoration, the ceiling too low, but it smells like sesame oil and high-quality sea food, and Jackson decides that it will do.

“This way,” he says, dragging them to a long table against the wall. He was planning to sit on the bench so he could face the room and see everything going on, but he gets distracted by a passing plate of oysters and, when he turns back around, Mark, Jaebum, and Jinyoung have already taken it.

Jackson pouts at them, but Jaebum and Jinyoung are looking at their menus, and Mark’s looking at his napkin, and pouting isn’t a comfortable expression, so Jackson just sits down harder than necessary and steals BamBam’s menu to spread the joy.

BamBam doesn’t bat an eye. For the next twenty minutes (the time it takes to decide what to order, actually order, and get their food), all they talk about is soup, noodles, and meat. Jackson barely remembers what it feels like to be full. As idols, talking about food is the closest they get, and they rarely tire of it.

They break into smaller, quieter conversations once the real food arrives, sentences split into awkward fragments by the long pauses required to chew and display the reverence the noodles deserve.

It’s in one of these lulls that Yugyeom prods his chopstick into BamBam’s arm and asks, “What do you keep looking at?”

Jackson, who was too immersed in his soup to notice that BamBam was looking at anything other than his own bowl, now tries to follow his gaze. He doesn’t have any luck. There are too many things he _could_ be looking at to identify the real culprit.

“What? Who? What?” Jackson demands.

“The waitress with the bun,” BamBam admits. “Actually…” He coughs into his fist, scoots his chair back, and stands up. “I’m going to go talk to her.”

“Really? Seriously?” Jackson punches BamBam’s thigh because it’s the easiest thing to reach. “I didn’t know you’d grown balls. Knock her dead, bro!”

BamBam wrinkles his nose and bats Jackson’s fist away before marching off across the restaurant. Jackson watches him for a bit, but it’s too hard to make out what’s happening around the chaos of other restaurant activity, so he gives up and returns to inhaling his soup.

“Where did BamBam go?” Jaebum asks a moment later. He, Jinyoung, and Youngjae were wrapped up in their own conversation, but now Jaebum’s shooting an almost accusing look at Jackson, as if maybe he stuffed BamBam into his sock just to fuck with them... or maybe as a creepy, living keepsake… Jackson has no idea what goes on in Jaebum’s mind.

Yugyeom unwittingly comes to his defense. “He went to talk to a girl,” he says, bouncing his eyebrows.

Jinyoung perks up, pausing in the process of picking the scallions out of his soup and dropping them into Jaebum’s. “A girl?” His eyes glint like sharp black rocks.

“Yeah, the omega waitress,” says Yugyeom. “The one with the fancy bun.”

“Who?” Jaebum asks. Jackson doesn’t get why he bothers when his tone conveys such obvious disinterest. He supposes it’s one of his half-assed, socially awkward attempts at feigning courtesy.

“Ask BamBam. He’s coming back,” Youngjae says, pointing.

Jinyoung smirks into his glass of Italian soda. “Rejected.”

Jackson twists to find BamBam hurrying towards them, blocking either side of his face with his hands.

“How did it go?” Youngjae calls, loud enough that several of the surrounding tables turn to look. Jackson glances back across their own table to find that Youngjae’s already wide mouth has curved across the vast majority of his face like the Cheshire Cat. Sometimes Jackson forgets that, beneath his gumdrop exterior, Youngjae is a scheming creature.

BamBam ducks lower and practically sprints the last couple yards to slump into his seat. “We aren’t talking about it,” he hisses.

“What did she say?” Jackson demands.

Rather than replying, BamBam spears a large piece of chicken on his fork, but Jackson grabs it before he can shove it in his mouth.

“Exact wording,” Jackson commands. “I want all the dirty details.”

BamBam sinks to the tabletop like a ruptured water-balloon. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“She didn’t recognize you, did she?” Jinyoung smirks as he resumes removing the offending scallions. Jaebum watches the procedure with raised eyebrows but doesn’t comment.

“No, she did,” BamBam says, words muffled by his forearm. “She said, ‘Oh, you’re in Got7, right? I’m a huge fan… of EXO.’ And then she blew me a kiss and said, ‘Pass that on to Chanyeol-oppa, won’t you?’”

“Is that it?” says Jinyoung, still transferring scallions. “You could’ve worked with that.”

“How?”

Jinyoung sighs, and then puts down his chopsticks. His expression morphs from indifferent to coy. “An air kiss?” he says, blinking at BamBam. “Chanyeol-hyung gets thousands of air kisses. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity; you don’t want to give him something more substantial? Maybe a cheek kiss?” And then he’s back to indifferent.

Jackson never forgets that Jinyoung is an actor, but it still sometimes gives him chills.

“That would get me slapped,” BamBam says, but he doesn’t sound too sure.

“Not if you play it right,” Jinyoung insists. “Humor. Confidence. Learn from your hyung.”

“It would only work for betas,” Yugyeom mutters into his soup. “An omega would definitely slap any alpha who pulled that shit.”

“Oh, have the omegas been picking on our poor little maknae?” Jinyoung coos.

Yugyeom lowers his face so low that the bottom of his chin disappears inside his bowl.

“Is that true?” Jackson turns towards Mark, who’s hunkered over next to Jaebum at the far end of the bench. “What would you do?”

“Don’t bother Mark,” Jaebum says, but it doesn’t sound like he’s really paying any attention. He’s frowning at his soup, which now has a mountain of flattened scallions floating on the surface.

“I’m not bothering him. I just asked a question.”

Mark shrugs. He’s poking at his noodles, and Jackson realizes that the bowl still looks completely full.

Jinyoung leans out so he can peer around Jaebum. He folds his hands together to form a platform for his chin. “I bet Yugyeom’s right. Secretly omegas like betas better. Right, Mark?”

“Weren’t you the one talking about sexism the other day?” Youngjae says.

Jinyoung ignores him, and no one presses the point. Instead, their eyes all shift down the table towards Mark.

Mark glances up, seems to realize that everyone is staring at him, and looks back down at his noodles. “It would depend who it was,” he says. “Context and stuff.”

“If we weren’t, like, in a group,” Jackson says, “what would you say to me?”

Mark pauses in his noodle-poking, and his eyes flick up to meet Jackson’s. His expression is flat, but his voice prickles with a note of accusation when he says, “You have a girlfriend.”

“Well obviously we’re talking about a situation in which I don’t have a girlfriend. It’s a hypothetical question.”

“You’d get slapped,” Mark says.

Jackson puffs out his bottom lip. “I thought we were friends.”

“If your definition of friendship includes soliciting kisses,” says Jinyoung, “count me out.”

Jackson scowls at him. “I never counted you in.”

“Pwing, pwing!” says Yugyeom, head rising triumphantly out of his soup. “Shots fired. Take him down, hyung!”

Jinyoung must do something under the table because not a second later Yugyeom yelps and doubles over, reduced to pained groaning.

“What were you saying?” Jinyoung asks.

Yugyeom slaps his palm against the tabletop, tapping out.

Jinyoung smiles at him. “Good boy. Stay down.”

“But would you really slap me?” Jackson demands, staring at Mark’s bent head. It’s eating at him more than it probably should, but he has the itchy suspicion that Mark wasn’t joking.

“Stop bothering him,” Jaebum orders, and he’s actually looking at Jackson this time. “Just be quiet and pass me the chicken.”

“I wasn’t bothering him,” Jackson insists, but he leans into BamBam’s space to grab the chicken anyway. He makes sure to thrust it into Jaebum’s face when he hands it over.

Movement to Jaebum’s right calls Jackson’s attention back to Mark, and he watches as the color drains from his face, leaving the skin a sickly gray-green.

“Hey, Mark. Are you okay?” Jackson asks.

“I’m fine,” Mark says, standing up suddenly. “I’m just going to get some air.”

Mark’s face is only getting greener, and Jackson pushes his own chair back without thinking. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, stay,” Mark says, and at other times Jackson might have ignored him, but there’s a sharp edge pushing through his tone. It’s jagged, the warning sign of a new splinter, and Jackson drops back into his chair. He wants to scratch at it, wants to figure it out, but he does have a sense of decorum, however blunt, and this isn’t the place.

Mark nods at Jackson when he realizes he’s going to do as he’s told. “I’ll just be outside,” he says—a band-aid too small for the cut he’s just torn—and then he zips off, out the door so quickly that Jackson finds it hard to believe he didn’t run.

“What was that?” Jackson asks, turning to Jaebum. “Do you think it was the chicken?”

Jaebum shrugs. “Finish your soup,” he says. But he keeps squinting at Jackson over the next ten minutes, eyes narrowed to two accusing lines.

Jackson resents Jaebum’s undisguised suspicion that Mark’s departure is Jackson’s fault, but he also suspects that he’s right. Or maybe Mark was just sick. That could explain why he didn’t want to eat and why the smell of food would put him off.

Except, if he was going to puke, why outside?

“Jackson?” Yugyeom says.

“Yeah?” Why not the bathroom?

“Can you pass the water?”

Even if he did puke in a planter or something, he should have come back by now. He should’ve at least texted someone. Jackson stands up abruptly. “I’m going to go check on Mark,” he announces to the table at large, and then spins off to do just that.

If anyone tries to stop him, he doesn’t notice.

Outside is hotter than in the restaurant. It’s June and the air runs thick with liquid energy and moths. Jackson bats a couple away from his face and squints down the street. He spots Mark standing on the very edge of the curb half a block to the west, pulsing red and yellow in the alternating beat of headlights, taillights, headlights. He looks pulled thin, stained by the artificial glow, a bit like an alien, and Jackson starts composing a joke about it for when he gets over there.

Except he never does get over there. He’s only covered three meters when an old car lurches up to Mark’s stretch of curb. Before the tires have even stopped turning, Mark steps into the street, and then he tugs the door open and slips inside, out of sight.

Jackson stands rooted to the sidewalk, staring as the car swings back into the flow of traffic and vanishes among the sea of other headlights. But the afterimage remains. It was a domestic model with the torn remnant of some sticker on one corner of the windshield. Not a taxi, not a company car, but not unfamiliar either. Jackson’s seen it around before, parked in the same underground garage where the van drops them off. He knows the car; it’s only the discrepancy of seeing Mark inside it that momentarily prevents him from identifying it as Minsoo’s.

Because why would Mark be in Minsoo’s car? Even if Mark called him and asked, why would Minsoo come pick him up? And why would Mark call him? It is so far beyond the realm of possibility that Jackson immediately begins thinking up scenarios as to how Minsoo’s car could be here without Minsoo himself. Maybe their manager borrowed it. Maybe all the company cars are in use and his own car broke down. Unlikely? Yes. But still a thousand times more probable than Minsoo showing up.

Jackson pulls out his phone to check with Mark, but it buzzes in his hand—an incoming call. Seolhyun’s name flashes across the screen, and Jackson only hesitates for a second before swiping the green arrow and lifting it to his ear.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Hey,” Seolhyun says. “I wanted to find out what kind of beer you want tonight. I’m heading to the convenience store now.”

Shit. “Right. Yes. Beer. Uh…”

“You forgot.” She sounds only mildly annoyed, like Jackson’s flakiness is expected, inevitable, and Jackson feels guilty that he’s become one of those reliably unreliable people. He doesn’t remember when it happened.

“No,” he protests automatically. “No, I didn’t forget. Never. Anything works for beer. I’m not picky when it comes to alcohol.”

“Okay,” Seolhyun says, but it’s clear he hasn’t changed her mind about anything. “See you in forty-five.”

“Yep,” Jackson says, trying to calculate how far he is from her apartment and if forty-five is doable “See you.”

Youngjae walks out as he’s tucking the phone back into his sweats’ pocket. “Are you still looking for Mark?” he asks. “I got a text. He said he was feeling kind of sick, so he headed back.”

“Yeah, I saw him leave,” Jackson says, ignoring the sting that Mark decided to text Youngjae before him. “Did something happen to the company cars?”

“No? I mean, not that I know. Why?”

“I’m pretty sure Mark just left in Minsoo’s car, but… you know. So I was wondering if our manager borrowed it for some reason.”

“Oh,” Youngjae says. “That’s weird.” But he doesn’t sound perturbed, or even surprised really, and his expression is impassive. “Are you coming back in?”

“No,” Jackson says, off-put by Youngjae’s reaction. “Seolhyun called. I forgot I’m meeting her tonight, so I have to sprint if I’m going to shower. Actually…” He checks the time on his phone. “There’s no way I’m going to have time to shower. I’ll just do it there. Do you see any taxis?”

“I’ll leave that to you,” Youngjae says, already turning back towards the restaurant doors. “Tell her hi and that I’m still waiting to meet her.”

“Yeah, yeah. Someday,” Jackson says, distracted by a taxi that has just turned the corner onto their block. “Bye, Youngjae.”

“Have a good night,” Youngjae says as Jackson steps off the curb to flag the taxi down.

He climbs in, shuts the door, and takes a second to bathe in the air conditioning before giving the driver the address. Unless there’s lots of traffic, he should actually get there a few minutes early. Then maybe Seolhyun will forgive him for forgetting.

 

Seolhyun’s apartment is cramped and dim, but Jackson has always liked that. Maybe because Seolhyun likes it. She claims to have weak eyes, hiding from sunlight with glasses and broad-brimmed hats, squinting in bright rooms. She stuffed the lamps that came with the apartment into a closet and replaced them with her own, dull, orangey ones.

The place is cramped because Seolhyun likes big things. The couch and chairs she bought take up two-thirds of the floor space in the main room. In the bedroom, there is only a narrow path around two sides of the bed. Jackson can’t turn around to get into the closet without brushing the covers. He’s sure the movers had a nightmare getting it all inside.

But Seolhyun likes it, so Jackson likes it.

Now they’re slouched on each end of the enormous couch, legs woven together in the center, and sipping on the beers Seolhyun picked up.

At least, Seolhyun is sipping.

Jackson downed two in quick succession and, after opening the third, has proceeded to run his fingers up and down the cool, damp sides without drinking at all.

They’ve talked about Seolhyun’s latest promotions, her issues with her manager—who’s a sexist jerk—and her more ephemeral issues with Jian, who’s acting childish and getting on everybody’s nerves. Seolhyun uses the term “everybody” liberally, usually when talking about herself.

But now they’ve lapsed into silence, Jackson watching the fuzz of droplets condense on his can, Seolhyun watching Jackson.

“You’ve been quiet,” she says at last. “I usually can’t get you to shut up, but you’ve listened very patiently today. It’s freaking me out.”

“I always listen,” Jackson protests automatically.

“Sure,” Seolhyun says. “Let’s say that. Do you realize you’ve answered yes to every question I’ve asked, including ‘How are you getting along with your new choreographer?’”

“I missed the ‘how.’”

“Sure,” Seolhyun says. “So you’re distracted. Let’s agree on that. Why?”

Jackson looks away from his beer to meet her round, black eyes, which are still quite round despite how she’s narrowed them. Without make-up, her eyebrows are practically invisible. In the dim lighting, they’re _actually_ invisible, but Jackson thinks they’re probably stretching near her hairline.

“Something’s up with Mark,” he says. “Just before I came here, at dinner, he, like, suddenly ran out. I think he felt sick, but then he just disappeared.”

Seolhyun stays silent. Her expression was already hard to make out through the shadows, and now Jackson can’t read it at all.

“So that was weird,” he goes on after a moment, “but he’s been weird for weeks now.”

“You’ve told me.”

“Did I tell you about how he’s been acting around Minsoo lately? I swear, up and down, they used to hate each other. But then one day, boom! It’s like they have this weird understanding now. They keep making eye contact. I think Minsoo almost smiled at him the other day, and Minsoo does _not_ smile.”

“You talk about Mark a lot these days,” Seolhyun says. “Tell me about you.”

“I don’t talk about Mark that much,” Jackson protests. “I spend a lot of time complaining about Minsoo.”

“About how he treats Mark.”

“Didn’t I tell you that funny story about Yugyeom and BamBam trying to buy groceries?”

“Yes,” Seolhyun says, “but then you told me a much longer story about Mark and Jinyoung trying to cook what they bought, and that was mostly about Mark.”

“Fine,” Jackson says, finally taking a swig of his beer. “I talk a lot about Mark. It’s not my fault. We spend a ton of time together, and he’s acting really weird these days.”

“I know,” says Seolhyun. “You’ve told me.”

Jackson doesn’t need to see her expression to know she’s irritated.

“Let’s watch a movie,” Seolhyun suggests after a minute.

“Okay,” Jackson says, and that’s what they do.

 

Later, when they’re in bed, Jackson rubs his face into Seolhyun’s neck.

“You’re not a dog,” Seolhyun says; she always does when he presses his nose into her. Jackson thinks she secretly likes it, the complaints just tradition.

Seolhyun knows how to pick her perfumes, and they always nicely compliment her natural scent, smoothing over the sharp bits, accentuating the flowery undertones… Jackson fancies himself something of a scent connoisseur when it comes to the thousand flavors of omega, and Seolhyun’s scent is soft but complicated. He’s always been fascinated by it.

But something niggles at the upper recesses of his naval cavity, just at the edge of his brain. The slightest tickle.

“Did you switch perfumes?” he mumbles against her carotid artery.

“Hmm?” she hums. Her mind gets sluggish late at night in a way it never does during the day. “Perfumes? No. No, I still like Couleur de l’Eau, though I have been wearing it a while… maybe soon… Why?”

Jackson sniffs again, the loud, snorty kind of sniff that Seolhyun pretends to hate. He tries to catch hold of the fleeting tickle. “I don’t know,” he admits after another, quieter sniff, “I thought something was different. I have this idea…” He pulls his face an inch away from her skin and inhales again to see if that changes anything.

“What?” Seolhyun prompts.

“I don’t know. I have this idea you used to smell more like bread.”

“Bread,” Seolhyun repeats. She doesn’t sound pleased, and Jackson understands. Bread is bland, plain, boring. The scent doesn’t really match Seolhyun, but Jackson can’t shake the memory. It’s vague, but there. Someone kneading dough in the corner of his mind. An omega scent, a scent attached to a memory of Seolhyun, he’s sure. He just can’t pin it down.

“Maybe not,” Jackson says to appease her. “I’m sort of stuffed up.”

Seolhyun sighs, but her voice is soft again when she mumbles, “Go to sleep.”

An hour later, long after Seolhyun’s breaths have gone slow and even, Jackson does.

He dreams of a bakery. It’s a bakery he used to frequent back in Hong Kong, a small place squeezed between two nicer stores, but in the dream it’s in Korea, and the wallpaper—sunny yellow in Jackson’s memory—has faded to a watery egg yolk. It’s empty. There are no customers, no one behind the counter, no one in the back. There’s not even any bread, just the scent of it somehow burnt into the walls, heavy in the air, drilled into Jackson’s sleeping brain along with the dream-style certainty that he must find it. There’s no explanation as to why; he just knows that the bread must be found, and he has to be the one to do it. It’s almost like he’s racing someone or something, or maybe just the clock, but no matter how many doors he opens, how many baskets he overturns, there’s no bread. Just the smell, the smell that proves the bread must be somewhere; Jackson just can’t see it.

When he wakes up, it’s still dark, and Seolhyun still smells nothing like bread.

Something tells him she should.


End file.
